


Self Control

by haleinedelail



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Doctor and Rose fight, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jackie Tyler pissed off, Kilgrave before Jessica Jones, Minor Ninth Doctor & Rose Tyler, Mystery, Ninth Doctor's Regeneration, Rape/Non-con Elements, Regeneration (Doctor Who), Regeneration Angst (Doctor Who), Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haleinedelail/pseuds/haleinedelail
Summary: A somewhat despondent Ninth Doctor leaves Rose off with her mum, then runs afoul of a powerful, cruel character who calls himself Kilgrave (pre-Jessica Jones). His power is terrifying, seemingly limitless, and the Doctor despairs as he realises that he probably cannot subdue him. How will the Doctor's genius ultimately control an ability like Kilgrave's?A related question: does the Doctor's subconscious choose his face during regeneration, or is it left to the fates?
Comments: 12
Kudos: 8





	1. ONE

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Back on the Archive, just to see if there's an audience here for this story. I've written TONS for Doctor Who on another site, but decided to double-dip this time! Who knows what can happen?
> 
> I am fascinated by the idea that the Twelfth Doctor might have chosen his face as a message to himself. When he was about to abandon a village to certain destruction, he glimpsed his reflection and realized it was the face of Caecilius, the man Donna convinced him to save in Pompeii, reminding him that He Is The Doctor and He Saves People. I find this a lovely piece of lore, and tantalizing as a concept to play with in fanfic!
> 
> The first four chapters of this story have been finished since before lockdown... it's taken me this long to get my other two projects finished, so I could concentrate on this. I hope you find that it has been worthwhile!
> 
> Enjoy!  
> \---------------------------------------
> 
> I should probably insert a trigger warning here. Issues of sexual assault are raised in this story, and if it is not the sort of thing you feel you can handle, please don't trouble yourself. (I didn't tag it in the archived warnings because it is not graphic - it is simply discussed, more or less in the abstract. It is, however, a component to the story.)
> 
> Suicide also comes into play, though not the despondency that usually leads up to it. Fair warning.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Rose have a falling-out (major or minor), involving an injury she sustained as she was trying to help him. They part ways for a few days, and the Doctor gets immediately immersed in a cloak-and-dagger!

ONE

The Doctor burst through the door and stalked heavily up the ramp of the TARDIS console room, headed for the controls. His large boots fell upon the metal floor as he moved about angrily, muttering to himself.

His companion followed him through the door. She was looking quite worse for wear. Her makeup was smeared, and her blonde hair was in complete disarray. Strands were flying away everywhere, and the sides lifted like birds' nests. She had a cut across her forehead, which was still bleeding a bit, she was nursing the remnants of a bloody nose, and there were visible bruises on her sternum, which was partially exposed by the purple v-neck shirt she was wearing underneath a grey hoodie.

She was also angry, but it was a complex anger. She was angry with him. And herself. She was annoyed at the entire situation. She also felt a bit sick. And depressed. And guilty. And she had a chalky dread, climbing up throughout her body and psyche.

But she hadn't yet had time to assess all of these individual feelings, so what she expressed was her anger at him, and his presumption of being "in charge."

"What're you muttering about, Doctor?" Rose asked, feigning whimsy, but her voice cutting across the room like a razorblade. She spread her arms wide as she walked up the ramp. "If you've got something to say to me, just say it. I can take it. Want to call me a stupid ape? Do it!"

"No, I don't want to call you a stupid ape," he shot back, throwing a gear into place, thus moving the vessel to some unknown locale. "Apes can be taught to follow instructions!"

"Follow instructions? What are you, my teacher?"

"Apes know better than to press a button they know will shock them into unconsciousness!"

"They were killing you!" Rose squealed in protest. "What the hell was I supposed to do? Let them?"

"Yes!" he spat. "I would have been fine!"

"You would have been fine if they'd killed you?" she asked, sardonically, sceptically.

"As it happens, yes," he repeated. "I can cheat death, whereas you, Rose Tyler, cannot."

"How do you cheat death?"

"Never you mind," the Doctor told her, authoritatively. "Just suffice it to say, I'm not ready to do it yet. Nor am I ready to let go of you, so just mind your manners from now on, all right?"

"Mind my manners? Mind my manners? Are you for real, Doctor?"

"Yes, I am."

"You can't talk to me like a child," she insisted. "You can't just decry. You can't just tell me to do something and make it so! I'm a human being, or hadn't you noticed?"

"Oh, believe me, I've noticed."

"Yeah, and that means, I've got a heart, and a brain, and a will of my own," she told him.

"I know! Your iron will almost cost the Weilotrek People their energy reserves!"

"But it didn't!"

"Not all of it, but there were immense losses, Rose!" he said. "They lost a full third of their stores, which would not have happened, if you hadn't pressed that button!"

"The alternative was to let you die! And sooner or later the Weilotrek People would have been attacked again by the Citizens of Doflo, and they would have lost their energy reserves anyway, because you would not have been there to stop it!"

"I told you…I can cheat death!"

"Bollocks!"

"It's not bollocks! Rose, it's the truth! I die, I can regenerate. It's part of what makes me… me. It's part of what makes a Time Lord."

"What?"

"If you had simply let the Corvus Mayor have me, I'd have died, returned as a new man, frightened the ever living crap out of them all, and been in a much better position to dispatch them."

"Well, I didn't know that, did I?" she argued. "You keep me on a bloody need-to-know basis…"

"I'm sorry if I haven't had time to fill you in on all the details of my personal physiology yet," he said, sarcastically. "Better do that, just in case you get it in your head to push any other daft buttons. How's Tuesday looking for you?"

"Shut up," she muttered at him. "All I knew was that you were dying, and that that button would stop the Mayor! I saw what it did to the other Doflos when you hit the button earlier. I saw an opportunity, and I took it."

"I used the sonic screwdriver when I hit the button," the Doctor pointed out. "Perhaps because…"

"I know," she interrupted. "Because pressing it by hand backfires, and causes electric shock…"

"…paralysis, unconsciousness, and if the subject is not revived, death! And you knew that!"

"Again… you were being killed, and I didn't know that you could refurbish yourself, or re-up, or…"

"Regenerate," he corrected.

"Whatever," she said. "You take me on these adventures, you want me to use my brain, be clever, be valiant, brilliant, and whatnot, but when  
I am, you give me a bollocking like I'm a schoolgirl!"

"I don't need you to be valiant and brilliant when I've told you to stay put. I need to stay bloody put."

"Ugh," she grunted in disgust. "Just… take me home. I can't be with you right now."

"Gladly," he said, adjusting the controls, and materialising yet again somewhere else. "Heart, brain, courage, no place like home."

\-----------------------------------------------------------

It was just past ten p.m. when Jackie Tyler had heard the TARDIS gears from inside her flat. She leapt through the front door of her flat and ran downstairs to the estate courtyard, in anticipation of seeing her daughter. She saw the outline of the blue box blinking, seemingly, in and out of existence, and waited nearby, watching as it became solid, and the gears stopped grinding.

"Rose!" she called out, with a delighted smile, looking forward to throwing her arms around her only child, who was somehow, miraculously, once again home safe with the Doctor.

But when Rose stepped out of the TARDIS looking battered from her adventure, she repeated the shriek of her daughter's name, this time with fear and concern and shock tingeing her voice.

"Hi, mum," a weary Rose said, leaning in to embrace her mother.

"What's happened to you, sweetheart?" Jackie whined, stroking Rose's disheveled hair. Then her eyes shifted to the Doctor, who had appeared in the TARDIS doorway, and was now leaning against the jamb, all cool and collected with his leather jacket and his ice-blue eyes. "You! What've you done to her?"

"She did that to herself," he said. "It's all a result of not listening to me. Just ask her."

"I was trying to save his sorry arse," Rose muttered to her mother. "Anyway, I'm going upstairs to shower, and sleep for about four days."

"I'll be back this weekend," the Doctor told her.

"Fine."

"You can decide then if you want to continue this… whatever the hell this is."

"Fine," she repeated, now reaching the bottom of the stairs, and making her way up.

Jackie crossed her arms over her chest, and looked at the Doctor with daggers in her eyes.

"What in the name of God, Doctor? You take her from me, you bring her back, you take her again, next I see her she's all beaten up! Now, listen, mister, you tell me right now what you mean when you say, she did it to herself! And tell me the truth, because I'll know if you lie, and so help me, I'll…"

"Oi!" the Doctor shouted. "I'll tell you the truth, if you shut up for a minute!"

She shifted her weight to the other hip, and waited. "Okay. I'm waiting."

"The Wieltrek People sent out a distress call because the Citizens of Doflo were attacking them, in order to steal their energy reserves."

"That sounds utterly daft. Are you just making up words, or what?"

"Do you want to hear the story, or not?"

She huffed, and shifted her weight again. "Fine. Continue."

"Early in the day, I'd used this big red button to stun some of the Doflos, and Rose learned that the button would send an electrical current through this large room they use for experiments done on rats. That's why I used my sonic instrument to press the button, instead of my bare hand."

"Rats? On other planets?"

"Rats are everywhere, they are," the Doctor said. "Well, long story short, the Corvus Mayor managed to overpower me and drag me into the experiment room. He's bigger than me – not cleverer, just bigger – and he was basically trying to kill me with a branding iron – and was succeeding. So Rose hit the red button, even knowing it would shock her worse than it would the Mayor. It sent a jolt through the room, which did shock me and the Mayor, and admittedly, it got him off me long enough that I could escape that room and lock him in it. But the shock that Rose received was larger, and it put out her lights for a good long while, not to mention, it destroyed her coif."

"Her coif? You're concerned about her coif?"

He ignored this comment. "She fell forward, hit her head and nose on the desk – hence the gash and the bloody nose – and I had a hell of a time reviving her. I had to resort to CPR, which is why her sternum is all bruised up. But fortunately, I've got her heart going again – no need to thank me."

Jackie gazed at him for a few moments, and the Doctor couldn't tell if she was going to revere him, or attempt to brain him with a Cricket bat.

"You arsehole," she hissed.

"What? Me? I told her to stay put! She did all of this on her own! Haven't you been listening?"

"Told her to stay put? What, like a dog?"

"I instructed her to stay in the TARDIS," he said. "Like a human being who could have been killed during the fight I was in."

"And you're surprised that she didn't?"

"Well, no, but…"

"You can't just decry. You can't just tell people to do things, and make it so," she told him.

"Rose said the same thing to me five minutes ago," he commented.

"Good. Because it's bloody true," Jackie said. She walked to the edge of the basketball court upon which they were standing, and then walked back. The Doctor had an idea that she was about to say something else, and he was not disappointed. It took her a minute, but she finally said, "You demand so much of people."

"All I ask is that they do what they're told so they don't get killed," he said.

"And yet, you consciously choose people who are clever and plucky, brave and inquisitive. Am I right?"

He thought about this. "I suppose so."

"And you can't understand why clever, plucky, brave, inquisitive people don't stay inside the box when you ask them to? Why they won't just bow to your whim when suddenly you decide that you don't want them fighting alongside you, for whatever reason?"

"It's for…"

"For their own safety," Jackie said. "I know. But you're missing the point!"

"What is the point?" he shouted.

Again, it took her a while, but she spoke. "You're frustrated because people won't just do what you tell them to. But you already wield so much power over them, Doctor… and maybe you don't even know it. Maybe you don't see it that way, but you do. And that's why the story you told me is so bloody terrifying."

"I don't understand, Jackie. I really don't."

"Rose knew that button would backfire, and shock her, and possibly kill her, didn't she?"

"Yes, she did."

"And yet, she pressed it. Why?"

He sighed. "To help me. To save me."

"That's right," she said, with some finality. "And yet you've got your knickers in a twist because she won't just obey you, like a spaniel?"

"Jackie, I have never asked anyone to sacrifice their life for me."

"And yet they do. They do everything for you. You're like poison that way, Doctor. I've seen it in Rose, I've seen it in Mickey, I heard about it with Harriet Jones. People do what they think you want, even to their own detriment. Even until death. Your power is dangerous. And you don't even know it, do you?"

Jackie was looking at him with wide brown eyes, as though seeing him for the first time.

"You're wrong," he said simply, stubbornly.

"You're choosing not to see it. And that will be the thing that finally gets someone killed."

"You're barmy."

"Maybe. But I'm right. Until you start realising how much bloody control you have over the people who are close to you, until you start accepting that your influence is like a drug, or a virus, then it's going to keep on happening. And one day, someone is going to step in front of a train for you and go splat. And you're going to whinge over it because that person just didn't obey."

"Go have a cup of tea, Jackie," the Doctor said, making to re-enter the TARDIS.

"You want obedience, but you get deadly devotion, and that's ten times more dangerous. Well, Rose may be more or less a grown woman now, but she's still my baby. You come back this weekend if you want, but I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure she doesn't set foot inside that blue box again."

He remained stoic in the outside as he watched her walk away, but her words had chilled him to the bone. He couldn't quite put his finger on why.

\----------------------------------------------------------

He stood still for a few moments, and continued to contemplate Jackie as she made her way back up the stairs. As she climbed, a man began at the fifth floor and moved smoothly down the steps. She passed him on a landing, and the Doctor saw her sidestep him, but by the time that happened, he had shifted his attention away from Jackie, and onto the man.

He was wearing black trousers and black and white trainers, along with a black hoodie. The hood was pulled over his head, so that his face could not be seen. The only part of the actual person the Doctor could see were his hands, one of which was clutching a briefcase.

As the man reached the courtyard, he glanced about to make sure no one was watching. The Doctor was standing just inside the TARDIS, and was more or less hidden by the vessel's perception filter, so he was able to watch the man without incident. The hooded figure crossed the courtyard, still unsubtly casting about to make sure he was alone.

"Cagey," the Doctor said to himself, wondering what was in the briefcase, why the man didn't want to be seen, and why he was all in black.

The man made his way to the kerb, where a big black car pulled up. Not surprisingly, the car was expensive, with tinted windows, and the person inside could not be seen either. Someone opened the door for him, and the man got in.

The world is full of terrible people – people doing sneaky things, dangerous things. It stood to reason, some of those people would live in council estates. Maybe even the council estate inhabited by his best friend and her mother.

But this was the first time he'd seen any shady goings-on at the Powell Estate, and the idea that someone was up to no-good and living within a stone's throw of people he cared about, well, it didn't sit well with him. And now that he'd seen it, he couldn't look away.

He made a quick mental note of the car's licence plate numbers as it peeled away, and he re-entered the TARDIS, ordering the machine to track the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, what do you think so far? Not terribly exciting yet, but a good Doctor/companion row is always worth a look, is it not? 
> 
> Next chapter will have you gasping for air... or so I'm hoping! Stay tuned! Thanks for reading, and don't forget to leave a comment - it will make my day!


	2. TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor makes first contact with a man in a purple suit. One death, one very near-miss, one very confused and frightened Time Lord.

"You want obedience, but you get deadly devotion," Jackie Tyler had said to the Doctor, much to his own chagrin. "Well, Rose may be more or less a grown woman now, but she's still my baby. You come back this weekend if you want, but I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure she doesn't set foot inside that blue box again."

He remained stoic on the outside as he watched her walk away, across the dark courtyard of the estate, back to her flat, where a slightly injured Rose waited for her. But her words had chilled him to the bone. He couldn't quite put his finger on why.

He stood still for a few moments, and continued to contemplate Jackie as she made her way back up the stairs. As she climbed, a hooded man carrying a briefcase began at the fifth floor and moved smoothly down the steps. She passed him on a landing, and the Doctor saw her sidestep him, but by the time that happened, he had shifted his attention away from Jackie, and onto the man.

As the man reached the courtyard, he glanced about to make sure no one was watching, and crossed it, unsubtly casing the space around him, verifying that he was alone.

"Cagey," the Doctor said to himself.

The man made his way to the kerb, where a big black car pulled up. Not surprisingly, the car was expensive, with tinted windows, and the person inside could not be seen either. Someone opened the door for him, and the man got in.

This was the first time he'd seen first-hand any shady goings-on at the Powell Estate, and the idea that someone was up to no-good and living within a stone's throw of people he cared about, well, it didn't sit well with him. And now that he'd seen it, he couldn't look away.

He made a quick mental note of the car's licence plate numbers as it peeled away, and he re-entered the TARDIS, ordering the machine to track the car.

The vessel flew above London, keeping the big black car within her sights. The Doctor could see it continually on the screen.

A fifteen-minute drive saw the car stop in the pricey neighbourhood of Mayfair on Upper Grosvenor Street, in front of a posh row of flats, less than a block from the edge of Hyde Park. The TARDIS materialised at the end of the block, just out of earshot, when the hooded man exited the car. He knocked on the door of a flat whose exterior was clean, white, and regal-looking, just as a properly expensive London flat ought to look. Within five seconds, he was let inside, the black car left the scene, and the Doctor noted which door it was, while he followed.

It took him another thirty seconds to catch up – he didn't want to be seen jogging through this neighborhood dressed the way he was, talking the way he did. No-one would take kindly to that, round these parts. So he took his time, and approached the edifice in question. The door had a wrought-iron screen, so it was nigh on impossible to press one's ear to the panel, to hear what might be going on inside.

But for a man with a sonic screwdriver in his pocket, things were a lot simpler.

He discreetly sonicked the screen open, and pressed the entire left side of his body against the door. He did hear rustling inside, and a hint of voices, but could not hear anything specific.

That is, until there was a gunshot.

"What the hell?" he growled, and sonicked the rest of his way in, through the door, into the narrow entryway of a private home.

The interior was, like the exterior, mostly white. The furniture – just a credenza and a small bench - was expensive and impeccable, and of course, there was a stairway in front of him.

No sooner were his eyes drawn up the steps than they were drawn down again by the body of a man in a black hoodie, tumbling awkwardly down, like a ragdoll, leaving a messy trail of blood as he went.

The Doctor cursed and went to his knees at the foot of the stairs, to examine the man, noting absently that both a bloody knife and a gun came clanking down to rest nearby. He could see without too much examination that the blood came from the head, so he ripped the hoodie off, and felt for a wound. His hands were immediately covered in sticky red fluid, as was practically everything he was wearing. The amount of blood was grotesque and traumatic, especially considering the white surroundings, including the carpet beneath the Doctor's knees, now turning a dark crimson.

He found the bullet wound at the back of the man's head, low, where the head meets the neck, and then noticed that the teeth had been very recently displaced. He'd been shot in the face, or so it seemed. The only mercy was that he'd probably died instantly. Though, he hadn't come tumbling down the stairs until ten seconds later – who had caused that?

"Hello," said a man's voice from the top of the stairs.

The Doctor looked up. A tall, thin man stood there, gazing down ominously. He was perhaps thirty years old, dark hair slicked back, and dressed in a well-tailored eggplant-coloured suit.

"Oh, hello," the Doctor said, in a sprightly, sarcastic way. "You must be the man of the house. Aren't you going to offer me a cup of tea?"

"You need to leave."

"Not gonna happen. I'm the Doctor. I don't just leave scenes like this."

The man was standing on a landing, and the staircase continued off to the left. He looked up at what must have been someone standing at the railing on the first floor, looking down, and said, "Take the body away."

Two other men came down the stairs. One was perhaps in his fifties, dressed in expensive(ish) everyday business casual attire, and the other was in an Abercrombie and Fitch tee-shirt and jeans. The latter was handsome, well-built, around age twenty. Without a word, the two of them worked together to wrest the body away from the Doctor, and carry it through past the stairs, into the kitchen. The Doctor then heard a door open and close.

He was then alone with a man in a purple suit, who said, "Thanks, doctor, but there's nothing you can do – he's already dead. Now leave. And don't tell anyone what you've seen here."

"Not bloody likely, mate!" shouted the Doctor.

The man in the suit stared at him with a frown. "Get out. Now. And keep your big Northern mouth shut."

The Doctor advanced up two steps. "I think you should come with me," he said. "Come quietly, and I won't see you thrown in an intergalactic prison. If you're lucky, I'll just deliver you to the London Metropolitan."

The man came downstairs, and stood just one step up from the Doctor now. The Time Lord now got a very good look at him. His eyes were intelligent, and as dark as his hair, his features sharp. He was good-looking.

This assessment was marred, however, by the fact that he struck the Doctor as unscrupulous and murderous.

Now right in the Doctor's face, the man said, "Go away. And don't talk about this incident ever again."

"No."

The scowl on the other man's face deepened. "How the fuck are you still here?" he growled. "How are you doing this?"

"How d'you mean, how the fuck am I still here? What kind of a daft question is that? Who the hell are you, anyway?" The Doctor paused, and narrowed his eyes. Something was off about this man. And not just the unscrupulous/murderous thing.

He pulled the sonic screwdriver once more from his pocket, and scanned the man quickly, before the instrument was swatted out of his hands, with a cry of "Get that bloody thing away from me!" He was forced to step back down to the foyer floor and pick it up.

The Doctor examined the reading. "You're human," he shrugged. "But… are you ill? There's a virus all over you."

"Shut up."

"And d'you know what? More to the point, why do you just keep talking at me? Why aren't you threatening to shoot me?"

"Me? Oh, I don't shoot people. Mind you, even if I did, it would be in self-defence." The man turned to his right, and revealed a gash in his left arm, with a small amount of blood soaking through the dark purple fabric. The Doctor realised that the hooded man must have attacked the man in purple with the knife laying at the bottom of the stairs.

The Doctor casually picked it up. "Ah. I see. Fair dues. Anyone who stabs you in the arm absolutely deserves a bullet to the head."

He discreetly stashed the knife in his jacket pocket.

The man on the stairs laughed. "That man shot himself. It was a shame, I tell you."

"Bollocks, he shot himself! What do you take me for?"

At that moment, the back door opened and closed again, and the two men who had removed the body returned, both covered in blood.

"Mr. Redmond, will you please tell this doctor what happened to our friend in the black hoodie? Who shot him, exactly? Tell the truth, now," said the man in the purple suit.

"He shot himself," said the middle-aged man, apparently named Redmond.

"How about you, Trevor? Tell this nice man the truth as you know it."

The younger man, too, said, "He shot himself."

"Indeed," said the man on the upper step. "Now, tell me, Trevor, do you see the gun currently lying on the floor?"

"Yes," Trevor answered.

"Pick it up."

Trevor crossed the sopping-wet red carpet to where a big silver handgun had come clattering to the floor.

"What're you doing?" the Doctor asked, stepping down off the stairs, attempting to watch Trevor and his apparent master at the same time. He began to back away.

"Now, Trevor, put the barrel of the gun in your mouth," said the man in purple.

"No!" Mr. Redmond shouted, but the man on the stairs, apparently in-charge, told him to shut up. And he did.

To the Doctor's utter shock, Trevor obeyed as well, and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. His hand was shaking, and he was starting to panic.

"What're you doing, mate?" the Doctor fretted at Trevor. "Don't listen to this arsehole! Get that thing out of your mouth!"

"If our leather-clad intruder does not leave the flat in the next ten seconds, Trevor," lilted the man in the suit. "Pull the trigger. If he attempts to wrest the gun away from you, or approach you, indeed, in any way… same goes. Splatter your brains all over that pristine white wall behind you, and your dad can clean it up, and dispose of your body. Not necessarily in that order."

Trevor began to sob in abject fear, but he did not take the gun out of his mouth. Mr. Redmond, who the Doctor just now realised was Trevor's father, began to cry as well, but he did not protest with words.

Wide-eyed, the Doctor looked from one man to the next, confused, panicked. "This is mental!" he shouted.

"You've got eight seconds left, doctor," said the man. "Eight… seven…. six…."

Trevor let out an anguished cry, and lost control of his bladder.

"Okay, okay! I'm going!" the Doctor said, and he quickly ducked out of the flat. He found himself back on Grosvenor street, and he waited another fifteen seconds or so to see if there was another gunshot. To his relief, there was not.

He caught his breath, and then turned and ran to the end of the block, now not caring who saw him running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had ZERO feedback on this story thus far... if you're out there following, reading, having thoughts, please leave me a comment... it's hard to keep going when no one seems to be reading!! (Needy. SMH) ;-)


	3. THREE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, we meet a new character named Flora, who has had a run-in with the man in the purple suit. Her story is a tad harrowing, even though she can't really tell it. What can the Doctor learn from her?
> 
> Trigger warning: sexual assault is discussed here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter upsets you. In a good way!

The Doctor entered the TARDIS, harried by what he'd seen, and desperately hoping that Mr. Redmond and his son would still be alive at the end of the night. He was horrified and distracted by the possibility that he himself had written their death warrants.

A quick search confirmed that the flat was in the name of someone called Paul Harold Redmond, aged fifty-two, widowed. His son, Trevor, lived with him, and attended university. Somehow, the man in purple had usurped their living space with them still in it, and they were complying with his every demand, clearly even to their own detriment. He did a search of the Redmonds' backgrounds, and found no skeletons, no shady doings, not even any huge debts to speak of. In short, the Doctor found nothing that an unscrupulous and murderous person could use as blackmail fodder, to gain utmost cooperation. Paul Redmond was a theatrical producer, small productions, usually outside London, and totally on the up-and-up.

He also did a DNA profile of the blood on his own clothing, hoping to find out the identity of the dead man in the hoodie. His name was James Roach, aged twenty-seven. Much like the Redmonds, no arrests, nothing hinky. His DNA was in the system because he had been a liver donor, at the age of twenty, for his cousin, Edward. He worked in a chip shop near the Powell Estate, where the Doctor and Rose had been on a couple of occasions, and lived with his mother. He may or may not have had a relationship with a guy named Lou. The guy was clean.

So… what the hell had Roach been doing there? Why the Redmonds' flat? Who the hell was the character in the suit? He couldn't fathom it. Couldn't think. Couldn't even form a wild hypothesis that might lead him to the next level of inquiry.

He knew that with some investigation, the answers would come – they always did, it was part of who he was – but the incident had left him off his game. He felt nervous and slightly stymied. It was not like him to allow himself that "buggered" state of mind, quite so early in a crisis. He reckoned he just needed to rejuvenate a bit – get centred, get perspective.

So, he stood for a few minutes at the console in a state of meditation. He tried to calm his nerves. He breathed steadily, put his attention on the sensations of his body, and visualised the untying of any tension.

After five or six minutes, he felt a bit better, so he tried to focus on the incident in a cold, detached way – like a detective. He made a note of the absence of Roach's briefcase, which he'd seen the man carrying when he left the Powell Estate, and when he'd entered the flat. The knife he'd used to attack the purple-clad man, and the gun he had (apparently?) used to kill himself had crashed down the stairs along with his body. But whatever was in that briefcase was still in the Redmond flat, and from Roach's spotless past, even with a bit of calm now on his side, the Doctor couldn't really get a fix on what that might be.

He reckoned that for the moment, it was irrelevant. He wanted to concentrate on the man in the aubergine suit. He wanted to know who he was, what he wanted, and how he had gained such unwavering compliance from Paul and Trevor Redmond? And what in the name of Rassilon was that virus? It had been all over him, and though the man was registering as clearly human, the presence of microscopic organisms on his body had been nothing like he had ever seen on this planet before.

He took the knife from his pocket and ran the DNA from the bloody residue. He was not particularly surprised to find that all records of this individual had been erased.

"Okay, plan B," he said aloud. He took the knife down the hall to a laboratory, and left it on the table.

From there, he decided to change his blood-soaked clothes, so he stalked down the corridor a bit further to his bedroom, and put on an entirely clean set of black trousers, a burgundy-coloured jumper, and replaced his scuffed black boots with a fresh pair. Then he returned to the lab, put a few drops of the purple man's blood on a slide, and examined it, using the TARDIS' highly-sensitive microscopic equipment.

He zeroed-in on the virus straight away, and confirmed what he'd thought before: it was nothing like he had ever seen on this planet. Or any other.

He spent the next few hours working with it, with the TARDIS' help. He wondered if he could trace the mutations backwards, in order to find its origin.

Five hours of examination and research yielded nothing, except that this particular virus was highly contagious, and mutated to the point of being unrecognisable to the limits of scientific inquiry on planet Earth. The Doctor felt sure that he could eventually discover its secrets if given more time, but he could not fathom how this virus got here, and/or how any human could have been exposed to it. Especially since, the man who carried it did not seem surprised in the least to hear that there was a virus crawling all over his person… so what gives? Had he created it himself? Had he been living in a bubble?

"Damn," the Doctor finally spat, as he took a frustrated step back from the lab equipment, and kicked a stool over onto its side.

_________________________________________________________________

The Doctor was forcing himself to take a break. It was now past three o'clock in the morning in London, on Upper Grosvenor Street where he'd parked, following James Roach into Paul Redmond's flat. He was sitting on the lone seat in the console room, with his feet up. In his hand, there was a bottle of root beer, which he was judiciously not gulping down, so as to prolong this very needed break from digging into the origins of an unknown virus.

But as often happened when the Doctor's mind was forced away from the thing at its forefront, his thoughts began to pick at scabs.

Paul and Trevor Redmond.

Were they dead or alive? They had clearly seen whatever had happened with James Roach, and no matter who had actually pulled the trigger, the Doctor felt sure that the man in purple was fully responsible for Roach's death. Why would someone like that leave witnesses alive?

Well, it all begged the question, again, who was he, and what did he want.

But right now, all the Doctor wanted to know was whether or not the Redmonds were all right.

He placed the root beer bottle on the edge of the console, and walked out the door without his leather jacket, not fully having a plan. He had the vague idea that if worse came to worst, he'd try to secret his way into the flat, and skulk about a bit. He could do that sort of thing when he was on his own, not that he fancied that idea very much.

He walked down the street at a medium pace, eyes on the flat the entire time. The street was quiet, as were most streets in the city at this time of night/morning. The streetlamps were on, but nearly all of the lights in the residences for the next few blocks were extinguished, and it gave the distinct impression that the Doctor himself was the only one awake for miles around.

Which was why, when he heard a sound, it startled him.

It startled him even more when he realised that the sound was coming from the Redmonds' flat, which was now directly across the street from where he was.

There was still no light, but the front door squeaked open, and someone stepped out.

It was a woman.

He was too far away to see her age, but he could see that her basic build was halfway to voluptuous, she had attractive legs walking on high-heeled shoes, and she had long, wavy red hair, that looked a bit the way Rose's hair had looked earlier this evening. That is to say, it was a complete and total mess.

He could also see from her gait that she was exhausted and/or injured. He could see that she was wearing a short, light-coloured dress, with spaghetti straps, which seemed totally inadequate for the cool night air.

He crossed the street, making sure to land on the pavement behind her, then stop, and call out to her, so as not to surprise her too violently, or make her think she was being accosted.

"Madam?" he said, a bit more loudly than he might've said most other things. He didn't want to get too close, but he also didn't want to risk being heard by anyone else.

She heard, and she stopped, turning to face him.

"Yes?" she said.

"Is it all right if I approach you? I can't help noticing you seem a bit worse for wear, and I find myself concerned."

She didn't say anything.

"I only want to help, I swear," he added.

Softly, she said, "Okay."

He began to walk toward her slowly, careful to keep his hands outside of his pockets. The woman stayed put, facing him, watching him as he came nearer.

As he got closer, he studied her face, and she seemed immediately familiar. He'd seen her somewhere before…

But he was distracted by the fact that her mascara was running and her lipstick was askew. He was reminded again how Rose had looked when he'd last seen her, after she'd been put through an electrical shock that nearly killed her. Heaven only knew what this woman had been through, but now that he could see her more clearly, and knew where she'd been, he had a guess. And it made him sick to his stomach.

When he was just a few steps away, the woman became, for the first time, just a bit self-conscious. She tugged at the strap of her dress on the left side. This was the first time the Doctor noticed that the spaghetti strap was broken, and the dress was being held up on that side only by its tightness, and her generous breasts.

She's walking funny. Her dress is torn. Her hair is a mess. Her makeup is undone. She looks utterly defeated.

That unimaginable arsehole in the purple suit just got a right sight worse.

"First of all, can I offer you my jacket?" he asked.

"No, thanks. I appreciate the offer though," she said, rather softly.

"Is there any way I can help you?"

She shrugged.

"My name's John Smith, but people call me the Doctor," he said. "Will you tell me your name?"

"Flora," she said.

And then it hit him: this was Flora Adley, the wife of the Mayor of London. Thirty-three years old, former model, mother of two. What the hell was she doing here, looking like this, at this time of night?

The sickness in his guts only grew.

"You've been in that flat there," he asked, indicating the Redmonds' flat, where he had been earlier that evening.

She nodded.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She shook her head, to indicate, no. She sucked in a long breath, suggesting she might be holding back tears.

"Pardon me, Flora, but I'm going to ask you two very difficult questions now, all right?"

She nodded.

"Are you the mayor's wife?"

She nodded.

"Have you been raped?"

To his surprise, she shook her head.

"Oh! Well, I… I'm ever so glad to hear that."

She looked down at her feet, and the gesture made the Doctor wonder if she was telling the truth.

He asked, "I know that none of this is any of my business, and feel free to tell me to keep my sizeable nose out of it at any time. But, did you happen to spend time this evening with a man who wears a purple suit?"

She took a deep breath, steadying herself, then said, "I can't tell you."

"Okay. Sorry, but… why would you risk coming out of the flat at this time of night? Especially as you're a bit disheveled. I'm not judging, it's just, you're a public figure. Aren't you afraid someone might see you?"

"I was told to leave," she answered.

"So you just… left."

"Yes," she said, shrugging, looking very, very weary.

"He told you to leave, and you left."

"Yes," she said, but something in her tone made him think she might say something else. He waited. After a few seconds, she added, "Though I would have liked a bit of time to freshen up, so I don't look so…"

"He wouldn't give you time?"

"No."

"Did you want to ask for some time?"

"Yes."

"But he told you to leave, and you left."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry, Flora, I'm having a hard time with this," the Doctor said. "I just want to confirm: you haven't been sexually assaulted."

"No."

He sighed. "Okay. Do you understand why I'm asking?"

"Sort of," she shrugged. "I mean, good Lord, what I must look like."

"Yes, it's why I became concerned enough to approach you."

"Though I don't know who you are, nor why I'm answering, to be honest. I guess I just don't have the energy not to."

"You don't have to do anything I say - anything you don't want to, all right?"

She nodded. "I know," she said, simply.

He continued, "I'm looking into a man in a purple suit, whom I think you've met. Tall, thin bloke, dark hair, smug. I don't think he's a very nice person. I think he's terrible, horrible news, frankly. Your talking to me is helping, though you can obviously stop whenever you need to."

She nodded, then turned slowly away, and began to walk in the same direction she'd begun, away from the Redmonds' flat, toward the park.

"May I walk with you?" the Doctor asked.

"Sure," she said.

He fell into step beside her. "May I continue to ask questions, or would you like me to be quiet, and just walk you home? Or be quiet and go away?"

"You're looking into someone?" she asked.

"Looking into someone, yes," he answered. "Does someone have a name?"

She nodded, though she did not say.

"Can you tell me?"

"No."

"But you do know it."

She nodded.

"Well, yes, I'm investigating him."

"I thought you said you were a doctor."

"Doctors investigate people sometimes," he told her, vamping. "Part of the whole first do no harm oath. He's bad for people, I know that much. A risk to public health and safety, you might say. I need more information."

"Well, I think you're full of rubbish, on that," she said, evenly. "But you're a nice bloke who's walking me home after… you're a nice bloke. And I think you're right about…"

The Doctor noticed that she nearly choked when she stopped speaking, as though something was physically preventing her from saying the man's name.

"Thanks for saying so," he told her, just for something to say.

"And thank you for saying I don't have to talk."

"You don't."

"Okay. But you can ask stuff. If you still want to."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. I want to talk, I just…"

"All right." He took another pause, and then, "You haven't been assaulted, you say, but you also said you're not okay. You look like you've been through some kind of highly unpleasant adventure – no offence."

"None taken," she chuckled.

"Flora, I'm sorry to ask this, but did you maybe have consensual sex with someone – I'm not saying anyone in particular – and it didn't go the way you thought it would?"

"I can't tell you."

"Well, was it maybe someone you didn't really want to be with, but you felt you had to comply?"

"I can't tell you."

"Did you have sex with someone in that flat, where I saw you come out?"

"I can't tell you."

"Did you have sex with anyone tonight?"

"I can't tell you."

The Doctor was quiet for a few moments. Then, "Okay, let's try something else. Did you go into that flat tonight to play Canasta?"

"No," she said. "Nothing like that."

"Did you partake of milk and biscuits while visiting that flat?"

"No, not that either. These are weird questions."

"Okay, so it seems that you can talk about what didn't happen, but not what did."

"It does seem that way," she said, seeming genuinely confused herself.

"Have you been told not to tell what did happen tonight?"

She said nothing. She looked tense, and walked forward with a stride that suggested a sudden anxiety that hadn't been there before.

"Flora, you were told to leave, and you left, even though you felt you needed more time. Were you told to do anything else tonight?"

She nodded tersely, quickly.

"Can you tell me what?"

She shook her head.

"If I swear that I can protect you from him, that he cannot get to you, no matter what, that I have methods of keeping you safe, and that he will never, ever find you, as long as you're with me, will you tell me? I mean, I'll do all of that stuff, even if you don't tell me, but…"

"It's not that I'm afraid to tell you," she said, stopping, facing him. "It's that I can't."

"You can't."

"I physically can't."

"Because he told you not to?"

Again, she said nothing, and just looked at her feet.

"Flora, do you mind if I scan you with one of my, erm, doctorly instruments? It won't hurt a bit. I just want to find out if you've got a virus."

"Okay."

"I'm going to reach into my pocket now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No comments make me languish as a writer! I'm doing this for me, but also for a bit of feedback. Having "fun" reading this story? Interested in what happens next?


	4. FOUR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor met a woman named Flora who seemed to know a thing or two about our mysterious man in purple. However, she's been hushed up, and the Doctor can only get so far...  
> But a Time Lord's always got another few tricks up his sleeve, hasn't he? Even if they're not actually "tricks," but more akin to "intelligence," and "research skills."
> 
> This chapter sees the Doctor find out quite a lot, quite quickly, about the human man who seems to have quite unearthly powers!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's hoping you'll find the Doctor's process compelling, ingenious, and believable! ;-)

"Flora, do you mind if I scan you with one of my, erm, doctorly instruments? It won't hurt a bit. I just want to find out if you've got a virus," the Doctor had said to Flora Adley, wife of the Mayor of London, a woman he had just seen emerging from the scariest London flat he had ever been in. She had spent time (he was sure of it) in the company of a man who had been wearing a purple suit when the Doctor had met him, and though she denied it, his Time Lord/interpersonal intelligence senses were telling him: she had been raped. At least, after a fashion.

Because, she had agreed to let him take the reading with the sonic screwdriver, and he had, indeed, discovered that she had a virus. It was the same virus he'd read all over the purple-suit man. And now, he more or less understood that the virus was all about compliance.

She had been told to consent (maybe in a "tell me you want me to..." scenario, so that she couldn't truthfully say that it had been non-consensual). Then, she had clearly been roughed up and used, possibly instructed to enjoy it. She had been told to keep quiet about it, not to let anyone know that she'd met him, had interacted with him in any way at all. She'd been told not to say his name to anyone, and simply to leave when he was done with her.

(At this moment, the Doctor allowed himself very briefly to be grateful that Rose was not with him. But he put that thought quickly out of his mind, because he could not bear to think about the horrible possibilities, if she had come face-to-face with the virus man.)

In the same way, James Roach had been told to kill himself, so he had. Paul and Trevor Redmond had been told to turn over their flat, then remain there as henchmen, so they had. Trevor had been instructed to blow his own brains out if the Doctor didn't back off. The Doctor assumed, then, that Trevor was still alive, as it would be more useful to keep him rather than kill him, and his life was a valuable pawn in the virus man's game.

In thinking about Flora, the Doctor didn't believe that this was the first go-round for her. He had a sense that Flora had been down the same road a few times with this character, because she was not the least bit hysterical, nor surprised, nor confused. More than anything, she just seemed weary of the whole thing, and glad (as glad as someone that exhausted and defeated could muster) to have someone (even someone full of rubbish) looking into it.

If only he could get the man's name.

And how the hell could there be a 'compliance virus?' It was brilliant and terrifying all at once. How could it exist on this planet, without anyone knowing about it? How many people had it? Was it new? Would Flora, Paul, and Trevor now become people who could wield the compliance power, or were they just carrier/victims of it?

And the fact that it was so mutated… did that put him, the Doctor, at risk? The man's "power" didn't work on him as of now, probably because he wasn't human. But that didn't mean that the virus wouldn't adapt.

However it worked, whatever it did, wherever it came from, and however it had got here, it was too dangerous to exist. But even though the virus didn't affect the Doctor, the virus man knew the Doctor's vulnerabilities (namely, the lives of innocent people), it would now be difficult and dangerous to try and get near him.

So, he'd have to go digging.

If this was alien, he could find it.

And if it was the result of human ingenuity… well, ingenuity on this level would be bound to reveal itself somewhere, somehow, wouldn't it?

___________________________________________________________________

It revealed itself, but not before quite a bit of toil.

In the end, the Doctor wasn't sure why he'd thought he could just search for records of experiments with a compliance virus and expect something to pop up like nice, neat Google hits.

Even the TARDIS herself dug into it, and found nothing. Which meant one of two things: either the human in purple had so effectively erased every trace of evidence of it, that not even an intergalactic, time-travelling computer with sentient intelligence could find it, or…

…the virus was a by-product of something, not intended to bring about compliance.

The latter was far more likely.

Human ingenuity was staggering sometimes, but not so as to duck the TARDIS' radar.

Records of it were probably "erased" and/or buried deeply, but the Doctor felt pretty sure that he and the TARDIS could find it… if he had any details of the original experiment.

But he didn't have. There was no way to know its hypothesis or protocols or procedures or examiners, without some shred of information that could give him (them) something to go on. A bit of a Catch-22.

So, he decided to go at it from a much more practical angle. He knew that the man often instructed his victims not to speak to anyone about him, or what they'd done and seen in his presence, but there had to be one or two people out there who had got away before being whammied by the man's full directives. Especially when the virus man was younger, and less experienced. The Doctor prayed that at least one of those people had had the wherewithal to go to law enforcement.

He began looking for police reports, describing a man in a purple suit (fully aware, of course, that he'd only met him once, and he happened to be wearing a purple suit – he could very well have owned other articles of clothing in his life. Still, people who love purple, he found, REALLY loved purple). Then he looked at mugshots of men who matched, roughly, the purple-suit-man's description. He did not find what he was looking for there.

Then, he and the TARDIS searched cases of inexplicable compliance. Perhaps cases in which a patient had hurt him or herself, had been referred to psychiatric, and then was either unable to explain why they had done it, claimed that they couldn't say on pain of death, or claimed they'd been quite easily coerced by someone with hypnotic powers?

And this was where it all came together. It took forever, but one hit was all that was needed.

In 1986, a woman named Louise Thompson had been rushed to hospital with horrifying burns over most of her face – she nearly died. The burns had been brought about by an electric iron, of the sort one uses to press the wrinkles out of one's clothing. She was unable to speak for over a month after the incident, but when asked about who had done it to her, when she was able, she replied, "I did it to myself." When the psychiatrist began treating her, she continued to say that she had done it to herself, but that she could not say why.

"You don't know why?" the Doctor read, from the psychiatrist's transcript.

"I know why," Mrs. Thompson had said.

"Then will you tell me?" the psychiatrist had asked.

"No. I will not."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why can't you tell me?"

"I can't tell you."

This frustrating exchange felt eerily like his with Flora Adley.

Louise's husband Albert, though, had talked separately to doctors. He spoke of an altercation with their ten-year-old-son, Kevin, culminating in the iron burns. After hours of interrogation, the exhausted, addled father had finally told police that the son had instructed his mother to press the iron to her face, after he didn't get his way. 

"Why would she comply?" asked the interrogator.

"I can't explain it..." Albert said.

"Well, you'd better bloody try! Because right now this all sounds very dodgy, and it's not looking good for you, Mr. Thompson."

"It's Kevin. My son... he's just got this incredible ability to coerce people."

"You're blaming your son?"

"He's the one who told her to do it!"

"He's ten years old, Mr. Thompson. You are his father. His actions are on you."

"I know they are. I know." He was near tears now, the Doctor could hear on the on-file recording.

"Why don't you just leave him out of this, and come clean? Why did you attack your wife?"

"I've told you a hundred times, I did not attack my wife. She attacked herself, after being..."

"...instructed by your son. Your son who has terrible powers of coercion."

"Yes!"

"Jesus Christ."

"But we're… we're... working on a solution! As soon as Louise is well again..."

The police were reluctant to believe the story, and always suspected the husband. But there was no proof, no previous (or subsequent) signs of spousal abuse, and Louise wouldn't say anything. Whether it was to protect her son, or whether she'd been instructed by him to keep her mouth shut, was impossible to tell.

And, when they questioned the son with a child advocate present, he denied it, of course, and claimed that his mum had always been a little unstable. In the margins of the police report, there were scrawled notes, questioning why anyone would make up a story like that about their own son.

This had to be him. Right age, right disturbing circumstances and M.O.

The file had been sealed off because of the son's age at the time, and the fact that he was questioned as a minor about a possible crime he may have perpetrated. But he was presumed innocent at the time, as all of the attention was focused on the father. And so, the Doctor reckoned, if adult Kevin Thompson had decided to expunge himself from "the grid," he might've missed this little tidbit.

He did a search of men named Kevin Thompson living in Britain – none of the hits were of the same man.

So, he did try to wipe himself off the grid, and there must now be some sort of alias.

But the point was, now he had names to work with, so the Doctor dug a little deeper. He cursed the fact that Thompson was such a common name all over the English-speaking world, but dug all the same.

Another few hours of searching and hacking yielded an e-mail to a private investigator in the London area, three months prior. It was from an Albert Thompson, asking said PI to track down his son, Kevin, who might now be using the name 'Kilgrave.' The e-mail instructed reconnaissance and location only, and warned the recipient not to engage with his son, as he is extremely dangerous. "He will force you to take your own life, or that of someone you care about, if he suspects that you know who he is. Do not think that you are not susceptible to suggestion."

The Doctor checked, and unfortunately, the PI had, in fact, taken his own life shortly after the e-mail was sent. The death had been ruled a suicide, though there had been no history of suicidality, depression, nor recent trauma of any kind.

"Kilgrave," the Doctor scoffed. "What, the name Deathtomb was taken?"

\------------------------------------------------------

Forty-eight hours after meeting 'Kilgrave' for the first time, the Doctor had used a single hospital record to work backwards, track the movements of Albert and Louise Thompson, and discover their disgrace from the University of Manchester.

"Well, that explains the Northerner slur," he said, staring at the screen, eating a pasty.

And now that he knew that the Thompsons were scientists, researchers who had been shunned from the academic community, something in Albert Thompson's statement sent an alarm ringing in the Doctor's mind.

Albert Thompson had said that he "can't explain" their son's highly persuasive nature, yet that they were "working on a solution." That combination of phrases didn't quite jibe, he felt. How could they be working on a solution, if they couldn't explain it? 

Well, there it was. The Doctor had suspected all along that the compliance virus had been a by-product of something else. And there was the proof.

"Perhaps I'm just projecting, but… honestly, one scientist to another…" he said aloud, reading the report on Albert's statement, for the third time. "But you created a monster, didn't you, Albert?"

And so, day three actually led the Doctor to Manchester. He didn't bother with the formalities – actually going to the proper university authorities, explaining himself (or even coming up with a ruse), and finessing his way in. He simply sonicked himself into one of the science buildings, and began poking about. He didn't reckon the Thompsons would have been knocking about above the radar in a state-of-the-art facility, even in the 1980s, given the way they were chased out of the place for their weird experiments.

So, he started looking for backstairs labs, makeshifted rooms used for sciency things... possibly one that the Thompsons had left in a hurry.

He managed to find an underground laboratory that clearly had not seen human hands for at least twenty-five years. The room was lined with greenish tile, that had long-since begun breaking away. The floor had clearly been flooded several times since the facility was abandoned, because the floor was filthy with dirt and plant matter, and there was a water line, about twelve inches from the floor, all the way round the room.

There were papers strewn here and there, the odd calculation, chart, lunch order.

And in the corner, there was a rusty, grey file cabinet.

The top drawer held nothing. The bottom drawer the Doctor had to pry open with an extra-strong sonic pulse, but the only thing in it was a pile of dry mush, that had once been files, but had been ruined by the water.

The middle drawer, however, yielded to him rather nicely, and the files were sparse, and the bottom half-inch of each file folder had been water-damaged and now crunched like dead leaves. But the vast majority of what information there was, was still intact. A quick glance through the files, and the names of all the players – Albert, Louise, and Kevin Thompson – jumped out at him. As did the date – October, 1985. The Doctor thought himself unbelievably lucky, even with his considerable powers of detection.

Though perhaps not that lucky, because clearly, someone had run the Thompsons out of there so quickly they hadn't even had time to recover all of their files. Could it have been Kevin himself? And no-one had bothered to go through the papers left behind, so keen was the university to wash their hands of this bizarre couple, their even more bizarre son, and whatever unsavory experiments they were doing.

It occurred to him, of course, that he could solve the problem using time travel, should he be able to nail down a point of origin for the experiments. He quickly dismissed this thought, though, for all the usual Time Lord reasons. That's cheating. That's meddling with events. That could cause alternate universes to form, and consequences in this world that are unforeseen, and possibly a lot worse…

His best bet now was reading, and some lab work of his own.

He took the files back to the TARDIS, rather than risk being caught there – not that there was anyone else in this part of the building today, nor had anyone visited that dank basement since Thatcher.

Kevin Thompson had been diagnosed with a terminal brain disease at the age of nine, and his scientist-parents, having all of the lab equipment and funding they would need at their disposal, began, shortly thereafter, experimenting to see whether they could save his life.

What they had come up with was a series of botched injections of souped-up antibodies, meant to attack the virus that was killing him. Seeing the makeup of the solutions injected, and the grade of needle they used, coupled with the injection site on the back of the child's head, the Doctor winced at how damned painful the process must have been.

Obviously, they had managed to keep him alive, as clearly Kevin had not died from the brain disease. However, what did happen was that the Thompsons seemed to have forgotten a) that what they were doing was experimental (read: not guaranteed, and highly flawed) and b) that they were experimenting on a human being – their son, no less. The narratives were cold and clinical, and expressed frustration that Kevin couldn't just sit still, and refrain from screaming when the needle went in. And, the antibodies were mutations themselves, and caused mutation after mutation of the virus, thus rendering it non-fatal to Kevin, but highly contagious and super dangerous to anyone in Kevin's immediate vicinity.

Simply put: they accidentally gave him a superpower.

But what the Thompsons didn't understand – and this was where it might have taken a Time Lord to see where they went wrong – was that they'd stumbled upon something that the Doctor had previously thought impossible on planet Earth, until at least the year 3016. One of the viral mutations had wrapped itself around the intangible electromagnetism from the prosencephalon portion of the brain, and began to affect not only Kevin's thinking, but the electromagnetic pulses in the brains of those around him. The result was that he could now give people the virus, and irresistibly compel people to do whatever he told them to, whether they wanted to or not.

It was not alien. It was dumb luck. And highly unfortunate.

But the good news was, the fact that it was tied to the prosencephalon meant that Kevin Thompson's power was tied to consciousness. If he could be rendered unconscious, he could be neutralised. For a time. Perhaps long enough to think of a longer-term solution.

Such as, perhaps an antidote or vaccine if need be, for Kevin, and the people he had affected. And the Doctor was certain that with the science begun by the Thompsons, and with Kevin's person on-hand for cell samples and the like, he could deliver the unfortunate man to a normal life.

Perhaps that's not what Kilgrave wanted, but it's what Kevin deserved. And it's what was needed, because Kilgrave was too bloody lethal to go unchecked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know that onscreen, Kilgrave says that the yellow thumb drive is the last vestige of information concerning the experiments done by his parents, the last bit of proof. But keep in mind, "onscreen" was ten years after this. And at that point, the files could have been destroyed (or stolen by a Time Lord).
> 
> I also know that there have been precious few comments and I'm really dying to know your thoughts! Why not drop me a line in the form of a comment before you click away from here?   
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is just gearing up to take a run at Kilgrave. He surmises a bit more about the virus, hatches a not-exactly-fool-proof plan, and has another slightly tense chat with Rose.

The Doctor had made the decision to try simply to neutralize Kilgrave until a solution could be found, such as an antidote to the virus. If he could render him unconscious and bring him into the TARDIS, the Doctor could study the virus with its effects knocked out for a bit, and have the man himself on-hand for samples.

But what if all he needed was simply one of Kilgrave’s victims? Someone currently under the influence – couldn’t he render them unconscious and study it from a different angle? One of these folks must surely be easier to acquire. Perhaps they would even cooperate with him. Flora Adley, he felt, might be keen to help, even if she couldn’t say why.

But given Kilgrave’s m.o., that is to say, inciting self-harm in others when things don’t go his way, he wondered if it was a good idea to drag anyone else into this insanity. What would happen if one of his “henchmen,” perhaps Paul Redmond, did not return from an errand? And it still didn’t solve the problem of Kilgrave himself. 

No, one way or another, the Doctor would need to acquire the flesh-and-blood man, in order to administer any kind of antidote he could devise. He may as well cut out the middle step, and go directly for the man in purple.

Whilst lost in his own large mental world, the Doctor heard the TARDIS console make a high-pitched sound. The shrill noise cut across the otherwise silent room, and scared the daylights out of him.

He gave a start, and cursed, as he had been yanked out of a kind of stupor, and now his hearts were going strong at a million beats per minute.

The sound had been a communications attempt. In essence, the phone had rung.

The screen told him it was Rose. He took a deep breath and collected himself, not wanting her to know she’d jostled him. Then he hit the green button to allow communication.

“Hello there,” he said, half-cheerfully, half in a manner that suggested he was feeling buggered. “How’s the head?”

“Better,” she answered. “How’s the ego?”

“Healthy,” he said. “Has your mum calmed down?”

“That’s an insulting question,” she complained. “But the answer is no. Have you?”

“Not a bit.”

“She’s still trying to talk me out of going off with you again,” she reported.

“And? Are you listening?”

“Not anymore, ‘cause it’s the same rubbish over and over again. But, suffice it to say, I’m considering my options.”

“Fine,” he said. “Did you just phone me to tell me you may or may not still be my friend as of this weekend? ‘Cause I could have waited to hear that.”

“No,” she insisted, tutting. “I phoned to see how you are. Because I thought you’d have phoned me by now, and you haven’t, so I wondered if something was wrong. It might interest you to know that I care about you, you arse.”

“Why would you think I’d phone? I said I’d be back this weekend.”

She tutted in exasperation. Again. “Because I got injured, and I’m your friend.”

He sighed. “All right, fair dues. Seriously, how’s your head?”

“Still need aspirin every few hours, and I have a bandage across my forehead that makes me look like Frankenstein. But I’m alive, and pretty sure I can still do maths the way I used to.”

“Good. What’s fifty-six times ninety-one?”

“Erm… eight-thousand six-hundred and two.”

“Not even close.”

“I rest my case. Maths the way I used to. So why haven’t you phoned?” she whined.

“I thought you were cross with me,” he whined right back. “Reckoned you’d want to be rid of me until at least the weekend.”

“Not even the least bit concerned about my well-being, considering what I did to myself, at your behest?”

“Now, let’s get something straight, Rose…”

“Kidding,” she chirped. “Actually, I’m not. But I’m willing to let it go.”

He sighed again. “Anyway, it’s not for lack of concern. I’ve been working on something… got lost in my own head for a few days.”

“Oh really? What is it, maybe I can help?”

“No, Rose, I don’t want you anywhere near this,” he said. “I’m dealing with a thing that messes up humans something awful.”

“Where?”

“I’m not telling you where, or knowing you, you’ll try to join me, and get yourself....” he stopped. He again shuddered to think what would happen if Rose got caught up in this. Kilgrave would have an absolute field day with her. With both of them.

“So then it must be here in London.”

“What? How d’you figure?”

“How the hell else would I join you? If you were handling a crisis on the planet Mongo, I’d be helpless to get there without your help, now, wouldn’t I?”

“Stay out of this,” he ordered her. “I mean it this time. I always mean it, but this time I need you to listen.”

“Javohl,” she said, sarcastically.

“Rose, this isn’t the time.”

“Well, if there’s a threat to humans, don’t you think I deserve to know about it?”

“Yes, and I’ll tell you about it when it’s over. Just suffice it to say, you are not in direct danger. And neither is your mum, nor anyone…” again, he stopped. He was about to say nor anyone in your vicinity, but he couldn’t be sure of that, could he? Not after the episode he’d seen in the Redmonds’ foyer. “Actually… have you heard about someone from your estate who’s gone missing?”

“Well, yeah. There’s a guy who robbed a bank a few days back, and no-one has seen him since,” she said.

“Robbed a bank?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah. Jimmy Roach. His mum was out in the courtyard this morning posting missing person flyers of him, that have the word innocent splashed across the bottom of the page. She’s a basket case.”

James Roach was, indeed, the man whom the Doctor had seen delivering a briefcase (which he now presumed was filled with cash) to Kilgrave, then tumbling down the stairs, with a bullet in his head. 

“Do you know him?” he asked.

“Not really, but I know who he is. And who his mum is,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to either one of them. Except maybe to say good morning, or whatever.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“On the telly! There was a news report last night showing the robbery on surveillance, showing his passport photo so he can be identified. Lots of people are buzzing about it.”

The Doctor stayed on the line with Rose, but did a quick search for news archives on James Roach over the past few days, and sure enough, he found a video of the man, waving a gun around in a bank lobby, frightening everyone to tears, and then making off with a big stash of cash. Weirdly (though, the Doctor understood why), he was not wearing a mask, nor a hood, nor making any apparent effort to hide his identity.

“The guy had a spotless record, and then he does this?” the Doctor mused, watching the video, with Rose still on the line. “Not bloody likely.”

“How do you know he has a spotless record? Is this something to do with the thing you’re working on that’s messing up humans?”

“Rose, leave it.”

“I can’t leave it! It’s in my bloody backyard now!”

“No, it’s not. It’s…”

“I want to help! I can’t believe you’re trying to do this to me again!”

“I’m cutting you off. I’ll explain the whole thing when I see you this weekend – that’s a promise.”

“Doc…”

And he ended the call.

She rang back, but he ignored her.

She tried again, but he ignored her again. Mostly because by then, he was lost in thought once more.

A man with an unassuming job in a chip shop, with a clean record. Donated a piece of his liver to his cousin, lives with his mum – strong family ties. No history (at least not officially) of violent or illegal behaviour…

“Kilgrave. Blimey, this guy is powerful,” the Doctor mused to himself as he read through a newspaper article about James Roach, and his bank robbery. “Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. So sorry you ran afoul of that bastard, and had to give up your life for it. How the hell did you meet him, anyway? Somehow I can’t see His Nibs frequenting your place of work.”

However it was that Kilgrave chose his victims, it couldn’t continue, obviously. 

Back to it.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------

Without doing any tests on the virus, the Doctor could clearly tell that it did not proliferate like other viruses. Normally, when a virus spreads from one host to another, everyone experiences similar symptoms. But in this case, the virus had a completely different impact on Kevin Thompson than it had on anyone else, and no-one could spread it except for him. It could be said that apart from having saved his life, the virus didn’t affect him at all – rather, it affected everyone but him. It seemed to give everyone else the urge to obey this one particular man, while his body continued to replicate the virus, but never suffer its effects.

And how did he know this without doing any tests? Because the virus wasn’t giving anyone else unreasonable, deadly, suggestive powers over others. If everyone Kilgrave had ever coerced was able to do what he could do, the Doctor would know by now. Everyone would know by now. The chaos would be unimaginable. The Thompsons, all three, were quite a clever family; not everyone could be as intelligent as they, and as efficient as Kevin, at covering their tracks. Honestly, the man did a spectacular job of making sure no-one bothered him, or talked about him. The Doctor had no doubt that his records had been wiped from the Earth because he had simply told someone to erase them. (There had been no mass-erasure of records anywhere on Earth in this time-region.)

Someone who “contracted” the virus did not become what Kilgrave was, because the virus was about Kilgrave. It had been created for him, and was specific to his DNA. And, the Doctor reminded himself, the viral mutation he was dealing with had wrapped itself around the intangible electromagnetism from the prosencephalon portion of a child’s brain, and began to affect not only his thinking, but the electromagnetic pulses in the brains of those around him. The fact that it was tied to the prosencephalon meant that Kilgrave’s power was tied to consciousness. 

“Futuristic stuff, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. Could get ugly,” the Doctor said to himself. 

In rendering a human being unconscious, there were several ways to go. Chloroform (effective, but violent and creepy), Rohypnol (also creepy), or possibly good old-fashioned whiskey. 

The most obvious choice was blunt force. However, this came with the possibility of blunt-force trauma, and if one is not careful, permanent damage or death. The Doctor obviously had no interest in killing, maiming, or particularly traumatizing the man, so…

The most humane method seemed to be surgical anaesthesia. Every Time Lord worth his salt who travels with humans (there had only ever been exactly one of those in the universe), in a vessel with a fully-equipped infirmary, would have a stock of Propofol, just in case surgery might become necessary. It was just good sense.

He went down the hall to the infirmary, and measured out a dose that would knock a grown human male out for about twelve hours. He pulled it up into a sterilised syringe, covered the needle, and shoved it into his leather jacket pocket. He briefly considered using a dart gun to administer the drug, but he was a lousy shot, and anyway, it seemed like dirty pool.

And now, he stood still beside the exam table, and wondered what the hell to do next.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Doctor still didn’t want to involve any of the Redmonds’ neighbours in this debacle, so he decided to wait until after midnight to try and break in. He had no idea what to expect – would the household be asleep? Or would only the sinister Master of the House be asleep, while Paul and Trevor Redmond stood guard, or some such rubbish? Would the place be a veritable Grand Central Station of illegal activity? Would Kilgrave be upstairs, shagging and shushing some unwilling party?

Whatever the circumstances, the point was, the Doctor didn’t like ambushing anyone. He didn’t fancy the idea of taking even a ruthless killer unawares, and ruled out the idea of injecting the man in his sleep. The Doctor was all about second chances, and making good choices.

Therefore, he had no recourse but to hope, as hard as he had ever hoped, that Kilgrave could be convinced that underneath it all, he was a victim, who needed to be free of the shackles of this virus. He could, perhaps, be reminded that he was Kevin Thompson, a sick child who had had a horrifying virus foisted upon him by rather cold, detached scientists, who happened to be his parents. Didn’t he want a normal life? Didn't he want to show that he didn't need his parents, in order to be well again?

The Doctor’s mind travelled quickly through all of the disadvantages there were, to being a person who could incite unconditional obedience. That kind of power was hair-trigger, dangerous, and could, he reckoned, be exhausting. He thought of all the things a human being wants and needs, that could not truly be achieved through the means that Kilgrave used. He catalogued them, and prepared to use them as ammunition. Or, more accurately, to build a case.

But most of all, he thought of the untold carnage that existed in Kilgrave’s wake – one bank robbery, one “suicide,” and one rape, just in the past several days. Not to mention the other “suicide” (the private investigator) and his mother’s disfigurement, which the Doctor had uncovered without trying that hard. In the last fifteen to twenty years, since Kevin had become Kilgrave, the count of lives ruined had to be massive.

And he thought of what Kilgrave could do if he went unchecked for another fifteen or twenty years. He wondered, if he, the Doctor, didn’t take him down, then who possibly could?  
“Here goes nothing,” the Doctor said, stepping out of the TARDIS, and heading down the block toward the Redmonds’ flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments? Concerns? If the story has been worth your time to read, mightn't it be worth your time for a comment? I would love to hear from you! Thanks for reading.


	6. SIX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor sneaks into Kilgrave's dwelling once again, and tries to talk the man into submitting to a cure.

With a syringeful of Propofol in his leather jacket pocket, the Doctor strode nervously along Upper Grosvenor Street toward the residence of the unfortunate Redmond family. As before, no-one was about, but with Kilgrave nearby, one could never be sure who was watching and listening.

But, one had to take one’s chances. He couldn’t very well materialise in the Redmonds’ foyer. Not without causing more chaos than was already slated to occur. 

The locks on the front gate had been changed, and a deadbolt had been added to the door. Fortunately, even Kilgrave would not know how to deter a sonic screwdriver, and so, the Doctor did not have much trouble getting into the flat. He found himself once more in the pristine white foyer of the Redmond home, and noticed with interest that the carpet had been either replaced or impeccably cleaned. One would never know that just a few days previously, a man had tumbled down the stairs with a bullet to the head, leaving a trail of gore behind him, then bled out on the carpet in front of him.

The place was dark. He walked forward, wondering what to do, now he was here. Would he find someone awake? Go directly upstairs to try and find the man himself?

Suddenly, a noise caught his attention from the left, and Paul Redmond walked out of the kitchen and appeared in front of him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked angrily, taking a swing at the Doctor, landing his fist squarely along the Doctor’s jaw.

He wasn’t a particularly large or strong man, so the blow was somewhat painful, but mostly just a nuisance. The Doctor staggered just a bit, mostly out of surprise.

Redmond took a second swing, and this time the Doctor ducked. Redmond was not used to this kind of violence, and the force of his swing not making contact with anything, forced his body off-balance, giving the Doctor an advantage. He grabbed Redmond’s arms, and pulled them behind his back, forcing him upright, unable to move.

“Oh, thank God,” Redmond breathed.

“Thank God?”

“Yes. Hold onto me tightly. Please.”

“You don’t want to hit me,” the Doctor whispered.

“No,” Redmond agreed. “I really don’t.”

“But if I let go of you, you’ll try to do it again, won’t you?”

“Yeah. Can’t help it. I’m sorry.”

“Okay, I understand. And I know you’ll understand why I have to tie you up.”

“Yes, I do.

“Got any duct tape?”

“In the mudroom,” said Redmond. “Go through behind the stairs, toward the back door.”

The Doctor pushed him forward, and he marched more or less willingly, though he did sort of struggle half-heartedly. He indicated a cabinet up to the right of a washer/dryer set, and the Doctor let go of him, picking up a bit of random piping nearby to hold him off, as the enthralled man attempted to attack again. The Doctor checked the cabinet, and found some duct tape, then threw the pipe aside, and used the same tactic as before: he ducked one of Redmond’s punches, threw him off-kilter and grabbed him. He fastened the man’s hands together, and pushed him down upon a bench, under which there were about a dozen pairs of shoes, for both sexes.

Once again, Redmond seemed relieved, and said, “Thanks for that.”

“Has he got women in the house?” the Doctor asked, wondering why this possibility had never occurred to him.

“There’s a staff. There’s a cook, and a cleaner, and a masseuse – all women."

"Blimey. Does he... you know, abuse them?" the Doctor asked, with a gulp, afraid of the answer.

"I don't think so, but I don't know for sure. I do know that right now he’s got one up there… you know, in his bed. Well, my bed, actually.”

"One of the staff?"

"No, someone he met... somewhere."

“Did you recognise her at all?” 

“Didn’t see her face,” said Redmond. “He’s got three or four that he brings here on a regular basis. Or instructs to come here, on a regular basis. They always look like Stepford Wives.”

“Obedient and dead inside,” the Doctor mused.

“Yeah. I know the feeling.”

Redmond pulled at his restraints then, and got to his feet, fighting to free himself, so as to attack the Doctor again, no matter how much he didn't want to. The Doctor shoved him rather easily back down onto a bench, and said, "Listen, an intruder came in, you attacked – you did what he said. You can relax.”

Redmond frowned, then said, “Wow. I find that incredibly reassuring.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Like I’d no longer be compelled to punch you.”

“Amazing. Didn’t think it would work.”

“Well, it did. But… leave me tied up. Just in case. And also, it might keep me out of trouble, if he should find me.”

“Okay. You’re a good bloke, Redmond. Is Trevor here?”

“Yeah, down in the cellar with the others.”

“In the cellar?”

“Yeah, that’s where he keeps everyone when he doesn’t need us.”

“How many of you?”

“Let’s see… me and Trevor, the cook, the housekeeper, Geoffrey the sous-chef…”

“There’s a sous-chef?”

“Mr. Markham, the gardener, of course. Then there's the masseuse, and Henry, his personal assistant.”

“Oh, of course, his personal assistant,” the Doctor said with some sarcasm.

“So that’s eight of us living in the cellar at the moment.”

“Were they all here when I was here before?”

“Yep.”

“Okay – I’m going to try and get you all out of here, all right?”

“Good luck, mate. And be careful – the guy is dangerous.”

“So I’ve seen, but I seem to be immune.”

“I noticed,” Redmond said. “Almost got my boy killed because of it.”

“I know – I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. But just remember, people around you are not immune. The folks downstairs, they won’t come up here unless he tells them to, but there’s a young woman up there with him, vulnerable, in his thrall, who is disposable to him.”

The Doctor nodded seriously, penetrating the other man’s eyes with his blue ones. “I will not play games with other people’s lives. I don’t do that. I’m not him.”

“All right.”

The Doctor patted Redmond on the shoulder, leaving the mudroom, heading for the stairs.

"I will not play games with other people’s lives. I don’t do that," he repeated to himself, inside his own head. He reckoned Rose and her mum would have something to say about that. And they might have a point. Mightn’t they?

He prepared to climb the stairs, but once again, a striking figure dressed in purple appeared on the landing.

“Oh. Hello. Who are you?” the Doctor asked her.

“Denise,” the beautiful brunette with smeared lipstick replied. She was wearing a thigh-length kimono tied at the waist, with an elaborate dragon pattern stitched into royal purple satin. She might have had some Asian in her ethnic makeup – though she was tall, curvy, and seemed to have penetrative blue eyes. “And you?”

“I’m the Doctor,” he answered, affably. “Pleased to meet you, Denise. Where’s Kilgrave?”

“Who?”

“The man in the suit. The one with the dark hair and the dark eyes and the ridiculous power of persuasion. Ring a bell? The one who usurped this house and keeps everyone in it cowering in fear. Did he send you to find out what was going on, when he heard a ruckus down here?”

“He is indisposed to receive visitors at the moment.”

“I’ll just bet he is,” the Doctor muttered. “Look, leave now. Just go – make a clean break, and never come back. I’m sorry for what’s happened to you here, Denise, I wouldn’t wish this one anyone. But you can go. Now. Change your name, start your life over.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do that,” he repeated, with exhaustion. “Of course you can’t.”

“I’m to stay the night,” she told him, rather flatly.

“Oh, well, at least he isn’t kicking you out onto your arse in the wee hours. Silver lining, eh?”

The creak of a door sounded from upstairs somewhere. The Doctor heard a familiar voice ask, “Well? Have you found out who it is? Are you just going to stand there chatting all bloody night with the intruder?”

Denise looked up to the landing, to an area just above the Doctor’s head, where he couldn’t see. Presumably, Kilgrave was standing just there.

“No,” she said to him, supplication in her eyes.

“Then tell me who it is,” he ordered her.

“It’s some man in a leather jacket,” she said.

“Ha! A northerner?” asked Kilgrave.

“Erm, yes. I think,” Denise said.

“Ohhhhh,” Kilgrave sang, now making his way down the first section of stairs. “The Doctor! Back for more!”

The tone of his voice might have been delighted. The Doctor shivered at the thought that Kilgrave might enjoy seeing him again. He suddenly wondered if he should have tested his own blood with the virus, just to be safe. He’d been assuming that he was immune, and always would be, but now seeing the man’s sharp features, his smirk, his razor-like body in the half-light...

The Doctor shivered again.

“Hello, Kevin,” he said, affably, with more calm in his voice than he actually felt. He knew it would get an unpleasant rise out of the man, and he was right.

“Don’t call me that,” Kilgrave spat, with venom in his voice. 

“Ah yes, that’s your Muggle name. Wouldn’t want to spread that around.”

“Leave this house now, and no-one gets hurt. I’m giving you a free pass. Go away.”

To his relief, the Doctor felt no twinge whatsoever of desire to comply with Kilgrave’s command. 

“Oh, come on, you know that doesn’t work on me,” he said, moving up to the landing with Denise. He looked up at the man, clad in only a pair of dark-coloured (presumably purple) satin pyjama bottoms, standing three steps above him. “Listen, mate, I’m not here to harass you. I’m just here to talk.”

“Why, because it went so well before?” Kilgrave scoffed.

“Because Kilgrave is too dangerous to exist,” the Doctor said, firmly. “And it’s a daft name – where’d you come up with it, anyway? B-movies, horror section?”

“You came to talk about that?” asked the man on the steps. He started to laugh. “Okay, what kind of nickname is 'The Doctor?' You fancy yourself some kind of healer, do you?”

“I do. In fact, I came to talk about you having a normal life,” the Doctor said, more gently than he had meant to.

The amused smile on the sociopath’s face disappeared immediately, and his face went flat. “What?”

“I came to offer you the opportunity to be rid of this bloody virus.”

“What virus?” Denise chirped, with alarm. “You didn’t tell me…”

“Shut up,” Kilgrave snapped at her, without looking at her. “Go back to bed and wait for me.”

She, of course, obeyed, without question. He took a half a step to his left to give her room to pass him on the stairs, but never took his eyes off the Doctor.

“Listen, Doctor. For whatever reason, I can’t force you to do anything – not the way I force most people.”

“I’m not most people,” said the Doctor. “In fact, I’m not people at all.”

“I don’t know what the fuck that means, but it’s a goddamn nuisance that you won’t obey me.”

“It’s not a nuisance, Kevin, it’s exactly what you need! I’m the only one who can resist you, which means I might be the only one who can help you!”

“Did my fucking parents send you? Because that would be really rich – sending a doctor this time, instead of a PI! What, did they give you a serum, makes you immune to me? I thought they gave up on that and just ran, the bloody cowards.”

“No-one sent me. I’m here because I care about humanity. Even yours.”

Kilgrave stuck out his bottom lip. “Aw, isn’t that sweet?”

“It’s not sweet,” the Doctor said. “It’s kind. Salvaging the humanity of a man who does not see, nor care about, the humanity of others… it’s a kindness. And it’s a duty of care, frankly.”

“I’m not asking for your kindness. I’m asking you to leave. For the sake of everyone in this house: leave. You should do it not because you’re compelled to by a virus, but because it could save a hundred lives.” Kilgrave was now eerily calm, eerily dark, as he spoke.

“Haven’t there been times when you just wanted to have a conversation with someone – a friend, a girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever – and you couldn’t do so freely because you’ve got to be so careful of what you say? That is, if you’ve ever had a friend, or a girlfriend, or boyfriend who was real, and not someone you commanded to be with you.”

“Stop it.”

“Have you ever been free just to shoot the breeze with someone, without having to finely hedge every word?

“Leave.”

“Haven’t you ever lost your temper and accidentally told someone to do something disastrous, that you didn’t mean? Maybe even someone you cared about? As much as you’re capable of caring for anyone, that is. Or have you ever mindlessly told someone just to go jump in a lake? Get bent? Fuck off?”

Kilgrave was silent, but he looked off into the corner, above the Doctor’s head. This seemed like a resounding yes to him.

“Haven’t you ever wondered about your true mettle, Kevin? Wondered how strong you really are? How much gumption you have, your real worth as a human being? I mean, you’re clearly clever, but you’ve never had the chance to find out whether you could really make something of yourself in this world! You’ve never had the opportunity to work for something, earn a living. You’ve never had a chance to earn someone’s love! Or even learn the value of love!”

“Shut up.”

“And do you know why? Well, of course you do. You’re a victim.”

“Shut up.”

“That’s right. A victim. I firmly believe that,” the Doctor said, sincerely. “Now, you’ve clearly victimised a lot more people than victimised you, but for the purposes of this conversation, that’s neither here nor there. Two cold, calculating scientists foisted a horrifying virus upon a child. A child who was already sick and dying. A child who was meant to trust them – had no choice but to trust them. A child who was their own flesh and blood. And yes, they were trying to save his life, but was that child given any sort of agency in the matter?”

Kilgrave swallowed, then reluctantly confessed, “No.”

“They gave you painful injections at the base of your brain stem, into your spine, time after time, until the work mutated into this… bizarre monstrosity. And did they try to fix their work? Make a concerted effort at the time to keep the virus under control?”

“How the fuck do you know any of this? Tell me how you know!”

“Of course they didn’t try to fix it. There were too frightened, weren’t they?” the Doctor asked, rhetorically. “So, I suppose I can see why you do what you do, why you use your power the way you do. You were hurt. You were violated, and now you violate others. In your twisted mind, perhaps it’s a kind of poetic justice. But it’s got to stop.”

“No,” Kilgrave repeated, this time in protest.

“Denise isn’t the one who hurt you. Flora Adley hasn’t hurt you.”

“What? Flora? How…”

“The Redmonds haven’t hurt you. James Roach hadn't hurt you. Your anger is misdirected, mate.”

“I’m not your mate,” Kilgrave spat.

“Don’t you want to stop punishing your parents? They’re still violating you every single day! Every time you try to get back at them them by controlling someone, by making them shoot themselves, by raping them, by forcing them to erase records, your parents violate you again – can’t you see that?”

“I’m going to give you to the count of ten, once again, to leave this property. One…”

“A human being needs love, self-validation, and challenge, in order to thrive. You’ve not had any of that – your parents took it away from you! I can give it back!”

“Two…”

“Kevin, listen, I’m not going away. And you shouldn’t discount this. It’s no sort of life!” the Doctor began to raise his voice, and grow desperate.

“Three…”

“Would you stop bloody counting?” the Doctor yelled. “You know it doesn’t work on me! You know you can’t make me do anything!”

“Four…”

“So ironic,” the Doctor chuckled now, quite bitterly. “The man who can force anyone to do anything, can control the actions of others, is still being controlled himself. By his mummy and daddy, no less.”

“Five…”

“You think you have autonomy with this power, Kevin, but you don’t. You’re just as much of a puppet as Denise. Or Flora. Or any other innocents you’ve taken under your thrall.”

“Six…”

“All right, look… at the very least, come with me,” the Doctor offered, both hands out in a stop gesture, trying to reason with the sociopath. “I promise, I won’t do anything to you – just let me examine you. Nothing invasive…”

“Seven…”

“Please! I’m a doctor! I just want to help! You’re ill, Kevin Thompson! So very ill!”

“Eight…”

“All right, I can see that I’m not going to appeal to your humanity,” the Doctor tried. “How about your sense of self-preservation? What if I go to the police?”

“Redmond!” Kilgrave shouted out. “Go open the door to the cellar! Nine…”

They heard footsteps. The Doctor cursed inwardly. Why hadn’t he tied Redmond’s feet, as well?

“I realise it might be difficult to convince them of your power, but it won’t be difficult to convince them that you’ve usurped this house, and are keeping hostages in the cellar.”

“Ten,” said Kilgrave. “Everyone! Come to the foyer! We’re going to teach our dear Doctor a lesson!”

“Bugger this,” the Doctor muttered to himself, and he removed the syringe from his pocket, pulled off the cap in one quick motion, and lunged at Kilgrave.

But the latter had the advantage of being three steps higher, and quite easily rebuked the attack with one quick kick to the Doctor’s chest. The Doctor wondered absently if this was the first bit of physical violence the man has ever performed for himself. It was almost beautiful.

Almost.

The Time Lord went tumbling down the stairs, and on the way down, the needle bent sideways.

Meanwhile, the foyer filled with eight people, each in a uniform, each looking exhausted and terrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No comments? Come on! Leave me a note, let me know your thoughts! Thank you for reading!


	7. SEVEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor figures out a way to knock out Kilgrave's powers for a few minutes, but will it provide enough time to get all of the innocent men and women out of there?

The foyer was crowded. It now had eight people, each in a uniform, each looking exhausted and terrified.

Among them were, of course, Trevor and Paul Redmond. Denise joined the party late, as it took her longer to get there from the bedroom upstairs. There was now a total of nine people in the room, under Kilgrave’s thrall.

The Doctor, who had been pushed down the stairs, his syringe hopelessly bent beyond use, got to his feet. In a panic, he looked at all of the horrified, helpless faces of Kilgrave’s so-called “staff.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kilgrave said to the whole room. “Please brandish the weapons I have provided to you. Hold them at your sides for now.”

Seven people pulled knives from their pockets, and held them beside their leg. Paul Redmond struggled to obey, as his hands were still taped behind his back.

Denise said, “I don’t have one.”

“Then go to the kitchen and get one, for God’s sake,” Kilgrave hissed at her, irritatedly. She left the room through a side hallway that led to the kitchen. “Right, if the Doctor comes even one step closer to me than he is right now, jam those blades into your jugulars.”

A few whimpers mitigated the otherwise stunning silence.

Denise rejoined them, tears streaming down her face, a butcher knife in her right hand.

“Furthermore, should you survive this evening, if you see the Doctor in this neighbourhood ever again after tonight, you will inform one another, and no-one else. Then, you will go home and end the lives of everyone in the house – family members, plumbers, pets, anyone who happens to be there – followed by your own. Is that clear to everyone? Say yes, if it is.”

Nine people said “Yes,” in unison.

“Doctor? Clear to you?”

“Crystal clear,” the Doctor growled back at him. “But your power doesn’t work forever. Viruses have a life cycle.”

“It will work if I renew the order every day,” Kilgrave retorted, smirking.

The Doctor filed this away. Kilgrave had just made a slip, by saying how long his influence lasts.

No more than twenty-four hours, probably less.

“Look, you don’t have to give up your power, but let these people go!” the Doctor implored him. “You can’t keep their families hostage, as well!”

“I think you’ll find that I can.”

The Doctor's voice became desperate, and he began to back away. “I will leave you alone. Just let them go! At least, release them from that order, and let them have their lives! I swear I will never come near you again!”

A woman in an expensive white linen sweatsuit was crying openly. The Doctor suspected she was the house masseuse.

He turned to her. “You okay? What’s your name?”

“Alice.”

“Alice, have you got kids at home?”

“Yes,” she wept. “Four of them!”

“Shut up,” Kilgrave commanded. “And stop crying. I can’t abide crying!”

She stopped immediately, swallowing her sobs with some difficulty.

“When was the last time you saw them?” the Doctor asked her.

But she had been told to shut up, and so, she could not answer. She broke eye contact with the Doctor, and stared at the floor, with eyes wide.

The Doctor was thinking fast. Thinking, thinking…

Redmond was now on the floor, writhing about, breathing heavily, still attempting to obey the command given by Kilgrave, with his hands still taped behind his back.

The Doctor borrowed a blade from the person standing next to him, and cut the duct tape, so Redmond could have his hands. The Doctor returned the knife, and Redmond immediately pulled his own weapon from his pocket, and fell in line beside his son.

Redmond looked at him with some disdain, as he had not actually wanted to be freed of the duct tape… but the Doctor had plans for him, and he would need his hands free.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said to him, unable to explain further. Then he addressed the whole room. “I’m sorry you’re all in this position. I’m sorry I can’t do more to help you. But you can rest assured that I will not take another step toward him. In fact, look, I’m backing away.   
And you won’t have to kill your families, I’ll see to that.”

“Wise decision,” Kilgrave told him. “Now, everyone, put your knives away. Redmond, please go through to the front, unlock the gate, and see the Doctor out.”

There was no need for that with the sonic screwdriver at his disposal, but the Doctor let Redmond go through the foyer door, and cross a smaller entryway. He pulled keys from his pocket and began to unlock the gate.

The Doctor then pushed the two closest people through the door along with Redmond, which turned out to be Trevor Redmond, and the masseuse, Alice. They stumbled and protested, but the Doctor pulled the door shut and locked it, cutting them off from the rest of the group. 

“No! Get back in here!” Kilgrave shouted. “Freeze! Everyone!” and no-one else moved a muscle in the two seconds it took for the Doctor to act.

He held aloft the sonic screwdriver, said a quick prayer to whomever might be listening, and let off an infrasound pulse. He hadn’t even been one hundred per-cent certain the screwdriver could do it… but there it was.

A low, intense, oppressive rumble began to vibrate the room. Every human in the foyer, including Kilgrave, began to shout in pain, and attempted to cover their ears. But it wasn’t just about hearing, it was about a frequency that caused great discomfort in humans, including some ugly side-effects…

All of the humans fell to their knees, and the Doctor noticed someone attempting to crawl off down the hall.

The Doctor was not immune, and he hoped against hope that his slightly-stronger-than-human constitution would allow him to remain conscious just long enough to put out Kilgrave’s lights. He himself was gritting his teeth, and shout-growling hard against the pain. 

People screamed. They begged him to stop. Vases shattered. Windows rattled. Human convulsions caused plants and a decorative table to topple over. Someone vomited. Perhaps more than one person – it was hard to tell, with the horrifying din of human agony surrounding him. There were retches, there were curses… just about everyone was crying. Meanwhile, behind him, the Redmonds and the masseuse were banging on the door, shouting “What’s wrong? What’s going on? What’s he done? Let us in!” The Doctor took this as a good sign – they were behind the door, and not affected.

Kilgrave himself was spitting some unintelligible nonsense that the Doctor could not identify. He was now on his knees and bent forward at the waist, clearly in terrible pain… as was everyone else in the room.

Two people had stopped screaming, because they were now flat on the carpet, unconscious. Another one passed out shortly after that…  
It was taking an enormous amount of power from the sonic, and enormous amount of will power from the Doctor, to keep this going.

“Come on! Come on, damn it!” he shouted. “Pass out! Pass out, you bloody disease!”

Kilgrave, now on all-fours coughed. He hacked, gagged a few times, and the Doctor was sure he would be sick. 

Two more people in the foyer stopped fighting.

“Come on!” the Doctor begged. “Please, please…”

And then, mercifully, Kilgrave’s arms went limp, and his body fell sideways onto the landing.

He was out.

The Doctor immediately let his thumb off the sonic pulse. The reverb stopped, and he staggered backwards into the wall. 

Dizziness, nausea, pain in his head…

“Doctor! What the hell is happening?” Redmond shouted from outside the door.

The Doctor tried to shake off the stupor, turned, still addled, and unlocked the door, allowing Paul, Trevor and Alice to stumble in.

“Holy shit!” cried Trevor looking around. “What did you do?”

“No time,” said the Doctor. “As long as that arsehole is unconscious, his power doesn’t work, so we’ve got to get everyone out of here fast.”

“You mean, all this time, we could have escaped while he was sleeping?”

“No, he’s got to be out. Out out. Beyond sleep.”

“So his power doesn’t work now?” Trevor asked, eyes lighting up delightedly.

“No, but if you lollygag, he’s going to wake up before we can empty the place out. My plan is to take him back to my lab and fix him. This can’t go on,” the Doctor replied. “But in order to do that, I’ve got to keep pumping him full of Propofol…”

“Er, Doctor, you should know,” Redmond said. “We are all instructed to hit the panic button if it looks like Kilgrave is about to pass out or be knocked unconscious. Now I understand why.”

“The panic button?” the Doctor asked, a bit incredulous.

“Yes, there’s one in the kitchen, and one upstairs. They used to call the police, back when this was our place,” Redmond told him. “But now they call a paid security team to come in here and… possibly revive him. Extract him? Kill the rest of us? I don’t know what they’re paid to do, but I’ll bet they’re on their way.”

The Doctor cursed, and dashed into the hallway where he had seen someone crawl off, just before losing consciousness. Surely enough, he found a woman lying on the floor in the kitchen. There was a trail of blood leading down the wall, across the floor, to her nose. Above where the trail began, there was a discreet grey button, with a tiny label beneath it that said “panic.”

He took a few deep breaths, still shaking off the effects of his own bout with infrasound. Then he knelt, turned her on her back, and picked her up. He walked out into the foyer with her, and said to the Redmonds, “Right, let’s get this going. Grab someone best you can, and get a wiggle on.”

“What about him?” Trevor asked, pointing to Kilgrave’s crumpled form on the landing.

“In a hostage situation, the priority is getting the hostages out, over and above catching the bad guy.”

“Is that international hostage-negotiation rules, or something?”

“Maybe. But it’s definitely the Doctor’s hostage-negotiation rule. I’ll get Kilgrave at the end if I can, but the important thing is to get the innocents out of his way before he comes to.”

Without another word, Trevor bent and picked up a woman, and began to walk out of the house.

The Doctor followed him, while Paul and Alice took a man by the arms and legs, and got ready to hoist him out as well.

“Where do we take them?” Trevor asked, once they were outside. 

“This way,” the Doctor said, walking off to the right, down to the end of the block where the TARDIS was parked. He had left the door unlocked, hoping that he’d be bringing Kilgrave back with him, and thinking he wouldn’t be able to fish for the key.

Redmond and Alice struggled with the man they were carrying, so once the Doctor deposited his charge onto the console room floor, he went back to help, leaving Trevor in the TARDIS to stand and stare, just for a few moments.

“Right, come on, then,” the Doctor said, grabbing his arm. “Remember what I said about lollygagging.”

The three humans fired disjointed questions at him concerning the TARDIS as they walked back to the flat, but he dismissed them all and told them to hush up, or they’d wake the neighbours.

They obeyed… but only because they realised he was right.

There were now three men and one woman left in the foyer, not counting Kilgrave. Interestingly, one of the men had come round. He was sitting up, and when the Doctor returned, he asked, “Good grief, mate, what did you do?”

“Infrasound pulse. Bloody brutal, but if I had tried to physically attack him again, you all would’ve jammed knives into your throats, so I reckoned it was a better course of action. What’s your name?”

“Liam.”

“Look, can you stand up, Liam?”

“Erm…” the man said… trying to get up. The Doctor took him by the arm and helped, and the man stood completely up. “Yeah! Yeah, I can, but ohhh…” He grabbed onto the Doctor as though he would fall over.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to need you to shake it off, so you can help us get everyone else out of here before your boss wakes up. If he does, he’ll be able to force you all to stay.”

“Okay,” the man, visibly trying to blink away whatever vertigo or biliousness he was feeling.

“Right. Alice, you and Liam take this guy here, okay?” the Doctor instructed, pointing at one of the two unconscious men on the floor. “You take the torso, let Liam take the feet.”

“Gotcha,” she said.

“Hurry. Redmond, you take her,” the Doctor said, indicating the lovely woman on the floor who had fallen forward, with a butcher knife at her side. Her purple satin kimono had slipped up in the back, and her bare bum was exposed.

Redmond knelt, and carefully adjusted her kimono, then turned her over on her back, and adjusted it again. “This poor woman,” he groaned. He then struggled to pick her up, but with a bit of a boost from the Doctor, he got to his feet, and walked relatively stably out the door.

The Doctor looked at Trevor with fear and trepidation. “You take the one on the floor. I’ll take the one on the stairs. Do you know how to carry him like a fireman?”

“Yeah,” Trevor said, and knelt. Surprisingly quickly, he was walking out the front door with a man flung over his shoulder.

“Strapping lad,” the Doctor muttered. 

He walked up the stairs with dread, and sighed heavily, stopping at the landing. He turned Kilgrave over onto his back, and studied his face for a few seconds. The man was innocuous-looking in his sleep – one would never guess from those sharp, boyish features that a monster was alive inside. 

“Such a waste,” the Doctor sighed to the unconscious form. He grabbed the man’s hand, and knelt, beginning to hoist him. “You’re clever – you could have done so much more with your life. Hopefully I can help with that. And you know what else? You’re a good-looking bloke – you could get women the normal way, you know. I reckon if you weren’t a murderous prat, and if you grew a sense of humour, they would come to you without much effort on your part. You don’t have to leave a trail of broken and defeated…”

“Doctor!” he heard from outside. A desperate Trevor was calling out to him. “The security team are here!”

“Well run!” the Doctor shouted.

Within seconds, the Doctor heard the distinct sound of a van door sliding open, and the muted footsteps of several well-trained, stealthy individuals, trying to go undetected. He also heard the distinct clicking of large weapons at their sides.

“Shit,” he spat. He had got two steps down – he was not even to the floor yet, and he was going to have to abort this bit of the mission.

One might say, the most important bit of the mission…

But no. He had not been lying when he’d said to Trevor that his first rule of a hostage crisis dictated that innocent lives took precedence over catching the bad guy… even if the bad guy might harm other innocents later on.

There were nine people who had been instructed to kill their families, and that order stood for another day or so, once Kilgrave was awake again. He was determined to get them to a safe place before the man who could destroy their lives even further, regained his power.

The security team were too close. He’d never make it out of there now without being seen – not with seventy kilos of extra human dead weight flung over his back.

He dumped the man in purple onto the foyer floor, amidst overturned furniture, plant soil, vomit, and broken glass, and slipped out the back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments! If you're reading this, drop me a line! Feedback is the lifeblood of a writer, and I'm dying with this story!!
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading!


	8. EIGHT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor can't win them all - innocent lives ARE more important than catching the bad guy. And we all know that Kilgrave has to remain active another ten years, move to the States, and torment Jessica Jones, don't we?
> 
> So in that case, what DOES the Doctor do? How does he reconcile within himself that he has done all he can to put a lid on such a deadly power that causes people to do things they normally wouldn't, even to their own detriment?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, this is the final chapter. I'm a little nervous about it - I hope you find that it makes sense in context. Getting to the final scene when the Doctor and Rose are talking over his experience with Kilgrave was THE REASON for writing the story!
> 
> Enjoy!

The Doctor moved the TARDIS off of Upper Grosvenor Street as soon as possible, across town to the Powell Estate. It was as far away as he could think to go, without leaving London. Rose had heard the grinding gears in the middle of the night, and had burst through the door in her pink pyjamas, only to stop in her tracks, finding the console room full of people she had never met. Some of them conscious, some of them not.

But once she understood the basics of the situation – these folks, and their families, were in serious danger of being tracked-down by a psychopath, and they couldn't go home yet – she did whatever the Doctor asked, without question. He handed her some smelling salts and asked her to help revive an unconscious woman.

"We're going to keep them with us for a couple of days," he explained, cradling a man's body helping him come round. "Twenty-four hours ought to do it, but given what's at stake, I don't want to take any chances."

"If their families are in danger, shouldn't we collect them as well, keep them in the TARDIS too?" Rose asked, doing the same thing with a woman.

"No," he said. "They're not in danger unless they're physically with these people, the ones afflicted, the ones… blimey this is hard to explain on the fly."

"Okay, okay – no need. You can tell me later," she said, calmly. To the woman just now opening her eyes, she said, "Hi there – nice to see you. I'm Rose, what's your name?"

"Caroline."

"Well, Caroline, are you all right for me to let go? Can you hold yourself up?"

"Sure. Thanks."

Rose gently extracted herself from Caroline, and the Doctor was now helping the last unconscious human become a conscious human.

"What do you need from me now?" she asked him.

"Er… can you go back to your flat and grab something for Denise to wear, that's not a purple satin kimono? I don't have anything for her."

"Sure," Rose said, quizzically. "Who's Denise?"

"She's lying on the floor over there. Conscious, but addled. She's had a rough go of it – some might say rougher than the rest of them. I'd say she's about your size. Maybe a bit taller."

"Okay. Be right back."  
\----------------------------------------------------------

Rose eventually brought back enough clothing for all of the women to have a change, and the Doctor provided his own array of currently unused togs to the men. They were all perfectly happy to completely discard what they had been wearing in the service of Kilgrave, especially Denise.

Then the two of them got all nine auxiliary passengers squared away into bedrooms – some of them opted to share, for moral support – and promised to deliver them home after forty-eight hours.

"His order still stands," the Doctor told Redmond and Trevor, who were last to settle into a room. "He's likely conscious now, so that thing he told everyone to do if they ever saw me in the neighbourhood again… it's active. We just have to make sure that none of us goes anywhere near that neighbourhood, especially not at the same time, until the effects of his influence wear off. With an extra day, just for good measure."

"Well, Trevor here is my only family," Redmond said, squeezing his son's shoulder. "But I know the others all have spouses, smaller kids, dogs, cats…"

"Denise said she's taking care of her ailing mother at home," Rose offered.

"Right, so we're being safe by keeping you here. Besides, your flat is in shambles," the Doctor said to Paul Redmond.

"I understand," Redmond said. "We just want to get some sleep."

\------------------------------------------------------------

Rose had caught bits and pieces of the story over the couple of hours she'd been with this lot.

"Okay, so…" she said, sitting down across from the Doctor at the TARDIS' kitchen table, handing off one cup of tea to him, and keeping one for herself. "Something about a prick in purple, and being afraid of hurting their families?"

The Doctor had been sitting with his head buried in his arms, slumped over the table in defeat. "Can we please just have tea, and be silent? That would be wonderful. Just for now. If you don't mind." He wasn't even looking up at her, but muttering into the sleeves of his black jumper.

Rose's features turned down into worry. "Okay. I don't mind." And she reached across the table to hold his hand.

They drank tea in silence for about a half-hour, intermittently holding hands, and once in a while making eye contact and smiling wearily at each other. Then Rose announced that she'd like to finish the night's sleep, and would be there for him in the morning to help make breakfast for their new friends.

"But I reckon I'd better be there in the morning when my mum wakes up, or else she'll flip," she told the Doctor gently. "So, I'm going back to my actual bed, in my actual flat."

"All right. See you… when I see you."

"Eight a.m.," she promised. "No later. Get some sleep, Doctor."  
____________________________________________________________________

A Time Lord such as himself should have been perfectly capable of preparing breakfast for nine guests – and in fact, he was perfectly capable. But an extra set of hands was always nice when there were waffles involved, and besides… he missed her. Especially now.

But, he reminded himself, if she wasn't game for it, he couldn't force her.

He wouldn't try to force her.

Or her mother.

It was already a quarter past eight, and most of their guests were awake, and wondering what was next. The Doctor had made some coffee and tea, and invited everyone to the kitchen, while he gathered his faculties to make breakfast. The cook, whom he had carried bodily out of the Redmonds' kitchen the previous night, offered to help. But he told her to sit – he reckoned she'd had enough of catering to others for the time being.

He promised to return in fifteen minutes, and he walked out of the TARDIS and up the stairs of Rose and Jackie Tyler's building in the Powell Estate. With a deep breath, he knocked on the door.

"Coming," he heard chirping from inside. When the door opened, Jackie's bright eyes darkened upon seeing him. "Oh. It's you."

"Yes," he said. "May I come in?"

"I suppose," she sighed. "You'll make your way in one way or the other, so I might as well step aside."

"That's not true," he said, emphatically. "If you don't want me to come in, I can stay out here. But I would like a message to get to Rose, if possible."

She looked at him with a bit of reserved amazement, and blinked a few times. "No, no, it's all right. Come in."

And she stepped to her right so he could enter.

"Is Rose here?" he asked.

"'Course she is," Jackie said. "I turned off her alarm so she'd lie in. She's had a rough few days. She's hardly slept."

"Ah," he said. "Well, then, maybe I should go. It's just, she promised to meet me at eight this morning to help me with something…"

"You see, that's just what I was afraid of!"

"Breakfast!"

"What are you on about?"

"She said she'd help me cook breakfast for nine."

"Nine aliens? On a distant planet? Over a hot, hundred-foot-wide spit that she could fall into and die?"

Wearily, he answered, "Nine humans, in my kitchen, in the TARDIS, parked outside. We won't go anywhere else unless and until she tells me she wants to, and has notified you. All right?"

"Bloody right," she said. "Do you promise it's just breakfast? And you won't go anywhere?"

"Yes. On my life."

"All right. Wait here."

Jackie disappeared down the hall, and within a few seconds, he heard Rose shriek, "What time is it?"

"Twenty past eight," said Jackie.

"Oh, shit, mum! I promised…"

"I know, the Doctor is here, he said you'd promised to help with breakfast."

"Yeah. He's got some people hiding out in the TARDIS, and… wait, he's here?"

"Yeah. But you don't have to go with him unless…"

Rose appeared in the hallway then, hair all mussed up, and sleep in her eyes.

"Doctor!" she breathed. "Sorry – I know I said eight."

"It's all right," he said. "If you're still up for it, I could really use your help."

"I'm up for it. Just give me a few minutes to get dressed."

He nodded, and she disappeared again.

Jackie walked past him, and asked, "Tea?" without looking at him.

"Yes, thanks," he replied, mostly so that she'd go to the kitchen, and not sit and either berate him, or try to make awkward small talk.

Rose had pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt and flip-flops in two minutes, and had combed her hair.

"Okay, let's go," she said, sweeping straight through to the front door. "Bye, mum!"

"Wait, what about tea?" Jackie whined, sticking her head through the kitchen door.

"Sorry, no time," the Doctor replied. "See you later. Later today."

"Fine," Jackie spat. "But be smart, Rose!"

"I always am, mum," Rose sighed, pulling the door shut. Then she turned to the Doctor and smiled. "All right, you, be honest. You came up because you miss me, not because you can't make a bunch of waffles on your own."

"Well, it is waffles and sausages," he said.

"Come on, now."

He smiled widely. "Fair cop. What gave me away?"

"Being nine-hundred years old, and the cleverest man in the universe," she shrugged, making her way down the balcony toward the stairs. "Yet having only one friend. So, what the hell happened last night, Doctor?"

They walked slowly down the stairs. Between there, and the TARDIS, he told her the story of how he had seen James Roach leave the estate, followed him to Upper Grosvenor Street, where he saw him die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and met a truly foul creature named Kevin Thompson.

"Calls himself Kilgrave," he said.

"That's a stupid name," she commented. "So, what, the name Doomlurker was taken?"

"I agree, but what're we gonna do?" he said, flippantly. "Anyway…"

He then proceeded to describe the incident which saw Trevor Redmond stick a gun in his mouth, leading the Doctor to skulk about trying to find out more on the experimental virus with which the Thompsons had afflicted their son, and the culminating event the previous night.

"Wait, wait," Rose said, stopping just outside the TARDIS door. "He can tell you to jam a knife in your throat and you'll just do it?"

"Yep."

"Without hesitation? Without protest?"

"Yep."

"Just because he said."

"Yep."

"And it's a virus causing it? He gives you a virus, and makes you comply?"

"Yep."

"And he uses this power to… what, basically live in the lap of luxury, and have anything he wants?"

"More or less."

"And he ducks the law just by commanding people not to talk about him?"

"Yep."

She wrinkled up her nose. "Ew."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it, Rose," he said. He had decided to leave out the bit about meeting Flora Adley on the street after she emerged, roughed up, from Kilgrave's command, and the fact that Denise (with whom Rose had chatted quite a bit the previous night) had been in the same boat. He reckoned she would get there on her own soon enough, the more she thought about what a power like Kilgrave's could imply.

"I've got enough info, thanks," she said, still looking disgusted. "So… he killed Jimmy Roach?"

"Technically, Jimmy Roach killed himself, but I think it's safe to assume he wouldn't have done, if he hadn't been told to by a man with unreasonable influence."

"Oh, my God," Rose breathed. "I just saw his mum yesterday. She's still holding out hope he'll come home."

"His body is buried in the back garden of a home in Kensington. We'll make sure it's found."

"Jesus," she breathed. "Lucky you're not human, or you'd have been pulled in, as well."

"Indeed," he agreed. "He'd have made me part of his staff. His IT guy. His handyman."

"His doctor," she said. "Guy like that's gotta be worried about social diseases."

"Now do you understand why I didn't want you anywhere near him?"

"I do," she said. "Thanks. I guess I should trust you, eh?"

"Well, yes, but… here's the thing, Rose," he said. He turned and opened the TARDIS door, and ushered her inside, closing it up behind them. They stood against opposite railings at the bottom of the ramp now, arms crossed, earnest. "I do want you to trust me. To listen to me. Because I don't tell you to do things lightly. If I ask you to hang back, there is a good reason."

"I know," she said, looking down at her feet in their blingy black flip-flops.

"But I understand now exactly why you were so pissed off when I dropped you here a few days ago," he said. "And your mum."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I was willfully not seeing how much I affect your actions, just by having you in my life."

"Oh! Yeah."

"I suppose you could call it a kind of cognitive dissonance. I was throwing a tantrum because you wouldn't obey directly, and not taking responsibility for the fact that you were doing exactly what I'd taught you to do."

"Ding ding! Now you're getting it."

"You're clever and you care – that's why I keep you around. So of course you jump in when the chips are down, especially when you can see me being harmed. And your mum's right: that makes me a bit dangerous. More than a bit, maybe."

"Yes, it does."

"And even when I'm not being harmed, there's something about me – my lifestyle, my philosophy, whatever it is – compelling you to do things for me. Do things like I would do them."

"Well, yeah. I mean… isn't that why I'm here? To learn from you, and do things for you that you want and need, but can't always ask for in the moment?"

"You're here to be my friend, and to be shown the universe, far as I'm concerned," he said. "Not to risk your life for me, sacrifice yourself, your freedom, your happiness because of wanting to please me."

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"I do," he said. "At least consciously, I believe those are your only duties. Be my mate, see the sights. You can leave the hard bits to me."

"Doctor…"

"But I must acknowledge that I can't ask you just to be a passenger. And that I haven't been asking you to be a passenger," he said. "The other day with the Corvus Mayor, you knew you'd be hurt, but you pressed that button anyway. Because I had, in my way, told you to."

"You've been leading by example. Showing me all along what you expect. And for the record, I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

"I know," he told her, his face darkening again. "That's the trouble. It's brilliant, but after what I've seen these past few days, it only reminds me that my impact on people is rather undue. And can be lethal."

"No, Doctor."

"Yes, Rose. I've been struggling over the last few days, mostly unconsciously, with the similarities between myself and Kilgrave."

"Don't do that to yourself."

"Well, the difference between us is, of course, that he intentionally forces people to do things, for his own gain. My 'power' – if that's what we can call it – is a by-product of… I don't know what. Being a Time Lord who travels with humans? Being clever? Being a handsome, dashing man of action?"

She laughed. "All of the above, I reckon."

"But it's just as lethal."

"Blimey," she mused. She adjusted her position, crossing her feet, and leaning again. "So this is what, an apology?"

"A bit. But also… a confession."

"Well, I absolve you," she said, lightly, making the sign of the cross with her hand in the air.

"I'm not looking for absolution. For forgiveness. I'm confessing because… Rose, I couldn't defeat the man himself."

"No, but you got all those people out of there. You saved nine human lives, and the lives of their families. That's so, so important, Doctor."

"I know. Thanks. But Kilgrave will live another day, another year, another decade - who knows? - and will continue to do what he does. He'll wield his power, just because he bloody well can. He is still unchecked. And I started out trying to take him down because I couldn't let that stand."

"So, what're you saying – you want to try again?" she asked. "I know you think I couldn't help, but…"

"No," he interrupted. "Well, maybe someday I'll try again. But for now, I just keep on mentally toiling over the idea that no-one should have that much power. No-one should have that much influence over others."

"Okay, this again. You need to hold it right there," Rose said, standing up straight and holding out her hand in a gesture that said 'stop.'

He ignored her comment. "And even if there's nothing I can do at the moment about Kilgrave, there sure as hell is something I can do about not replicating that kind of power."

"And that would be?"

"Just this – what I'm doing now. Recognise it in myself, and try to evolve."

She frowned. "So, are you saying you don't want to travel with humans anymore? Are you saying…"

"No, I'm not trying to distance myself from you, Rose. Quite the contrary."

"Glad to hear it," she said, with more apparent relief in her voice than she meant to reveal.

"But the frustrating bit is, I've battled with this phenomenon to varying degrees over the years, but I never seem to remember for very long. I always get yanked into some epic battle, and manage to forget the high degree of sway I have. And then I get all childish and wind up saying things like, 'I expect you to follow orders,' and then when someone gets hurt - when you got hurt, Rose - I tried to justify it with, 'she did it to herself.' Which is exactly what Kilgrave said about Jimmy Roach."

"You're being daft," she said, trying to be reassuring. "You're dangerous, yes, and I appreciate all of this, but you are not him."

"Be that as it may, I'm definitely going to need a reminder of all this – self-awareness, self-control."

"Okay. That's fair. I'll remind you every now and then, when you're being a prat. I'll point out that you're demanding compliance, while denying that's what you're doing."

"I'll need it more than every now and then, Rose. Trust me – you don't want to live in my head. Especially not right now. If you knew what went on in here, you'd run for the hills."

"No, I wouldn't," she said. "But I get what you're saying. So, how do you propose to remind yourself not to become Kilgrave?"

"I haven't worked out that part yet. It's going to have to be something palpable, that I can see every day."

"Maybe you can tattoo his name across your forehead, so you'll see it every time you look in the mirror."

He knew she was basically joking, and could tell by the tip of her tongue sticking out mischievously between her teeth. But it wasn't the worst idea. "I like it," he told her, contemplatively.

"See? Clever, me," she chuckled. "So, shall we make some waffles and sausages?"

With that, Rose went bounding down the hall toward the kitchen, and disappeared.

"A reminder, every time I look in the mirror..." he mused to himself, before turning to follow her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading - hope you found the ending at least somewhat satisfying, if not action-packed!
> 
> As I said at the beginning of the story, I loved the idea that the 12th Doctor chose his face as a subconscious reminder to himself of a thing he learned in Pompeii. This is the same idea, only a much darker reminder.
> 
> So, if you have been reading this story, why not break your silence now? One comment, just to show you care. ;-) It would make my day! (Please enjoy yours, as well!)


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